Numerical simulation and optimization of construction: Product prototyping of new raw earth-based energy-saving hollow bricks

Abstract

With the promotion of the urbanization construction process, the treatment of engineering waste soil is still mainly landfilled resource utilization, which leads to a large amount of land being occupied and pollutes water, atmosphere, and soil. Therefore, it is urgent to find technical ways of resource utilization of engineering waste soil, increasing the utilization rate of engineering waste soil. In this paper, based on the experimental parameters of waste soil material modification carried out in the early stage, we adopted numerical simulation to optimize the proposed nine new types of raw soil-based (RSB) energy-saving hollow brick structural concept design schemes in terms of mechanical and heat transfer properties and carried out single brick trial production and relevant physical property index test for the preferred schemes. The numerical simulation results show that the uniaxial compressive strength, strength-to-weight ratio, Mise maximum stress distribution, damage characteristics, and steady-state heat conduction of the new RSB energy-saving hollow bricks with different structural designs are not only related to the mechanical and thermal properties of their substrates but also related to the wall thickness, rib thickness, hole rate and hole arrangement of the bricks. After preferential selection by numerical simulation method, the average apparent density of the new RSB energy-saving hollow bricks made in the trial was 1192.4 kg/m3, the average compressive strength was 5.94 MPa, and the durability index values of carbonation coefficient and softening coefficient were 0.87 and 0.86, respectively, and all the above indexes met the technical index requirements of national specifications for non-load-bearing wall materials. The heat transfer coefficient of a single brick width wall of this brick type using only blind hole area paving slurry masonry is 1.473 W/(m2∙K), which can meet 50% energy saving requirement in hot summer and cold winter areas. The research results have strong theoretical significance and practical value for promoting the research on the resource utilization technology of engineering waste soil in new energy-saving wall materials.