Recycled Refractory Brick as Aggregate for Eco-friendly Concrete Production

Abstract

The amount of construction and demolition waste continues to increase year by year.These wastes have a significant harmful influence on the environment; refractory brick is among of these wastes. this paper concerns the reuse of refractory brick wastes to produce an eco-friendly concrete. To achieve this objective,coarse and fine Natural Aggregates (NA) were partially replaced with recycled Refractory Brick Aggregates (RBA). According to the design of experiment, two families of mixes were prepared and tested: the first mixes was made with coarse and fine NA (as reference concrete) and the second mixes made by replacing 20% of coarse and fine NA by coarse and fine RBA. For each of the mentioned families, three cement dosages of 350 kg/m3 , 400 kg/m3 , 450 kg/m3 were investigated. A series of experiments including water porosity, density, Ultrasonic Pulse Velocity (UPV) and compressive strength were assessed. Observed results indicate that the use of coarse and fine RBA had a relatively influence on the water porosity and UPV of concrete. However, the use of coarse and fine RBA produces a slightly decreased the density of concrete (below 2%). Moreover, the use of coarse and fine RBA in concrete improved the compressive strength. Hence, coarse and fine RBA can be successfully used to produce concrete with acceptable properties.