Abstract
The usage of concrete spans the length of civilization and in modern day construction environment, concrete remains one of its major materials. As a result of high cost of construction and construction materials especially in Ghana and other developing countries in West Africa, different efforts have been made to find alternative local building materials to substitute wholly or partly some of the constituents of concrete. This paper looks at the potential of oil palm shells (OPS) as coarse aggregate in lightweight concrete by mainly assessing the compressive strength of OPS concrete and also establish the best mix ratio for OPS concrete. The coarse aggregate of the mix ratios 1:2:4 and 1:3:6 were replaced with OPS and their densities and compressive strengths determined on the 7th, 21st and 28th days of the concrete maturity. It was found that OPS can be used to replace coarse aggregate up to 75% in 1:2:4 mix ratio and up to 50% in 1:3:6 mix ratio. It is therefore recommended that the best mix ratios are 1:2:2:2 and 1:3:3:3. Single storey residential buildings, offices and footbridges are some of the recommended structures that OPS concrete could be suitable for.
 Keywords: Lightweight concrete; oil palm shell aggregates; density; concrete cubes; concrete maturity
Highlights
Concrete has been the most common building material for many years
3.1 Results The compressive strengths and densities obtained from the tests on 1:2:4 mix ratio variations with oil palm shells (OPS) are shown in Table 6 and Table 7 respectively
The compressive strengths and densities obtained from the tests on 1:3:6 mix ratio variations with OPS are shown in Table 8 and Table 9 respectively
Summary
Concrete has been the most common building material for many years. It is expected that concrete would remain a building material in the coming decades. Mass concrete dams, reinforced concrete buildings, prestressed concrete bridges and precast concrete components are some typical examples. It is anticipated that the rest of the developing world will use these forms of construction in their future development of infrastructure. Concrete is a composite material comprising of aggregates, a binder and water. The strength of concrete depends on the proportions of the mix ratio and the water content. The durability of concrete is the ability of the concrete mix to resist detrimental effects from the environment and to perform satisfactorily (in spite of these effects) under service conditions in the duration of its service life (Teo et al, 2008)
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