Abstract
This article examines the usability of the mixture of laterite and calcined (heated) gypsum or cast laterite as a residential building masonry material. The objectives involved preliminary tests to determine the gradation of the laterite, mix ratio of the constituent materials with adequate proportion of heated gypsum. Compressive and flexural tests were carried out on the samples to determine the suitability of the material for walling. The results obtained from this work show that calcined gypsum is suitable for a non-load bearing (infill) masonry material. The comparison of the tests results indicates that cast laterite of 15% gypsum additive is adequate and higher in compression and flexure than the conventional sandcrete blocks.
Highlights
Many materials have been used in civil engineering as building materials which have the ability to resist the imposed load on such structures
Despite the availability and cheapness of laterite as a building material, the use of the material is gradually fading away due to problems such as shrinkage cracking when trying to pour laterite walls as water slurry, labour intensively involved in ramming laterite or joining blocks together among others
This work is based on the assessment of strength and durability of walls built of traditional laterite materials, Abdulkareem [2], Medubu [3], in their studies reported that the durability tests performed in the laboratory on brick size specimen of mud walls and sundried bricks were unsatisfactory, observations made on the field did not portray the situation to be worse
Summary
Many materials have been used in civil engineering as building materials which have the ability to resist the imposed load on such structures. Cast laterite does not shrink as it cures (it expands slightly), making it much less likely to crack like other laterite material, it will absorb moisture, but it retains enough strength even when saturated, to maintain its structural integrity, it can be rendered moisture resistant by the use of additives to the original mix or by spraying the finished product with a silica spray. Another major consideration is that cast laterite can be made from a wide variety of types of soil, unlike adobe, rammed laterite and cob (which must have certain percentage of clay to larger soil). Cast laterite can incorporate clay into the matrix it operates
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