Experimental Investigation of the Effect of Fired Clay Brick on Partial Replacement of Rice Husk Ash (RHA) with Brick Clay

Abstract

Clay bricks are more popular in building constructions than the cement/concrete bricks because of eco-friendly and low cost. These bricks have been made from clay, since they found. However, the quality of the bricks can be upgraded by doping with the agricultural natural waste materials. Rice husk (RH), is a most common and hugely abundant wastes that consist of SiO2 percentage is RHA. In the present study, eight sets of brick were manufactured and each set consists of three bricks. These bricks were doped with RHA of ratio 0 to 30% of the total weight of mixture with a step of 5%. These bricks were allowed to dry for 3 days and fired in the brick kiln, which the traditional method is still used to burn bricks in Sri Lanka. The physical and mechanical properties of the burnt bricks were tested and compared with Sri Lankan Standard Specifications (S.L.S) as well as the British Standard Specifications (B.S.S) and compared with the commercially available brick made purely from clay. The bricks doped with RHA are obviously superior to the commercially available brick in the Eastern region of Sri Lanka. However, the brick doped with 5% RHA has higher compressibility of 3.7 N.mm-2 and the water absorption of 15.8% that satisfy the S.L.S and B.S.S.