Abstract
Awareness of sustainability in construction has led to the utilization of waste material such as oil palm shell (OPS) in concrete production. The feasibility of OPS as alternative aggregates in concrete has been widely studied at the material level. Meanwhile, nonlinear concrete material properties are not taken into account in the conventional concrete wall design equations, resulting in underestimation of lightweight concrete’s wall axial capacity. Against these sustainability and technical contexts, this research investigated the buckling behavior of OPS-based lightweight self-compacting concrete (LWSCC) wall. Failure mode, load-deflection responses, and ultimate strength were assessed experimentally. Numerical models have been developed and validated against experimental results. Parametric studies were conducted to study the influence of parameters like slenderness ratio, eccentricity, compressive strength, and elastic modulus. The results showed that the axial strength of concrete wall was very much dependent on these parameters. A generalized semi-empirical design equation, based on equivalent concrete stress block and modified by mathematical regression, has been proposed. The ratio of average calculated results to test results of the proposed equation, when compared to ACI 318, AS 3600, and Eurocode 2 equations, are respectively improved from 0.36, 0.31, and 0.42 to 0.97. This research demonstrates that OPS-based LWSCC concrete can be used for structural axial components and that the equation developed can serve a good guideline for its design, which could encourage automation and promote sustainability in the construction industry.
Highlights
This research studied the buckling behavior of lightweight self-compacting concrete (LWSCC) wall incorporated with oil palm shell (OPS)
With the investigation through experiment and numerical studies, the following conclusions can be drawn: 1. It is found that the axial load-deflection behavior of OPS-based LWSCC wall shows linear responses in the initial loading region, which are followed by nonlinear response up to ultimate failure load
It can be seen that the existing design equations from the standards provide conservative estimation with Pcal /Pexp ratios ranging from 0.36 to 0.91 and are not suitable for use in lightweight concrete wall
Summary
Since aggregates constitutes about 65% to 80% of total concrete volume [1], this heavy consumption has led to gradual exhaustion of conventional resources for aggregate production. This has created the need for more sustainable and economical alternative aggregate materials. Normalweight aggregates (NWA) in concrete production can be replaced with other materials, such as lightweight aggregates (LWA), which are either natural or generated by-products from industrial or agricultural processing. The application of lightweight aggregate concrete (LWAC) as a building material in industrial construction has been extensively promoted since the 1960s due to its lightweight characteristics [15]. LWSCC is more favorable in large complex structural applications, in tall buildings or long-span structures
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