Chemical Composition, Distribution and Morphology of Beranang Laterite and Granite Aggregate

Abstract

Imbalance ecosystem due to massive construction projects taken by the government and developers need to be tackled seriously. Replacement on the construction material nowadays become a trend in solving the part of the issue or as a whole. Investigation on the most popular concrete material, concrete need to be done properly in order to find potential replacements especially on the aggregate as it takes approximately 60 to 70 % of concrete constituents. Laterite aggregate seems to have the potential as it is abundantly available in most region in Malaysia. This paper presents the chemical composition, distribution and morphological study on the Beranang laterite aggregate as compared to granite aggregate. The size use in the study is 20 mm maximum. The aggregates were subjected to, chemical elements, chemical elements distribution and the morphology analyses. From the results, it can be discussed that the main compositions such as carbon, silica, and oxygen were detected on the surfaces of both aggregates with similar peaks trend. Furthermore, the structural and morphology of both aggregates were also similar. In conclusion, based on the experimental carried out, Malaysian laterite aggregate has the potential to be acted as coarse aggregate in concrete mix. However, further experiments must be conducted to investigate the physical properties of it.