Abstract
The environmental impacts of the construction industry can be minimised through using waste and recycled materials to replace natural resources. Results are presented of an experimental study concerning capillary transport of water in concrete incorporating densified expanded polystyrene (EPS) as a novel aggregate. A new environmentally friendly technique of densifying was used to improve the resistance to segregation of EPS beads in concrete. Twelve concrete mixes with three different water/cement ratios of 0.6, 0.8 and 1.0 with varying novel aggregate content ratios of 0, 30, 60 and 100% as partial replacement for natural aggregate by equivalent volume were prepared and tested. Total absorption, absorption by capillary action, and compressive strength was determined for the various concrete mixes at different curing times. The results indicated that there is an increase in total water absorption (WA) and capillary water absorption (CWA) and a decrease in compressive strength with increasing amounts of the novel aggregate in concrete. However, there is no significant difference between the CWA of control and concretes containing lower replacement level.
Highlights
The environmental impacts of the construction industry have been a major contributor to the environment pollution all over the world
The capillary water absorption, as indicated by rate of water absorbed per unit area, increases when natural aggregate is replaced with increasing amounts of stabilised polystyrene (SPS) aggregates; coating the surface of LWAC with water proofing material is recommended which may prevent the CWA
The increase in CWA is accompanied by a decrease in compressive strength
Summary
The environmental impacts of the construction industry have been a major contributor to the environment pollution all over the world. These impacts can be minimized through using waste and recycled materials e.g. waste polystyrene to replace natural resources. A recent study [4] investigated the effect of EPS aggregate size on strength and moisture migration characteristics of lightweight concrete containing fly ash as a supplementary cementitious material. The results indicate that for comparable aggregate size and concrete density, concrete with unexpanded polystyrene (UEPS) aggregate exhibited 70% higher compressive strength than EPS aggregate. The results indicate that the EPS concrete containing bigger size and higher volumes of EPS beads show higher moisture migration and water absorption
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