Strength and water absorption properties of lightweight concrete brick

Abstract

This study presented the strength and water absorption properties of lightweight concrete brick containing Expanded Polystyrene (EPS) as the material replacement for sand. EPS has been widely used by the construction industries in the production of lightweight building materials such as wall panel and lightweight concrete blocks. Hence, in this study, EPS has been used as the replacement material in the production of lightweight concrete brick. Replacement of sand by EPS was based on volume. The replacement percentage of EPS was 0%, 20%, 30%, 40% and 50%. The brick properties that have been investigated in this study were density, water absorption and compressive strength. Based on the experimental results, the density and compressive strength of the brick was decreased as the percentage of the replacement increased. Meanwhile, for water absorption properties, it was found that water absorption of the brick was decreased as the percentage of EPS increased. However, the properties obtained has satisfied the requirement where the brick density for lightweight should be less than 1680 kg/m3 and the strength for load bearing and non-load bearing brick is 11.7 MPa and 3.45 MPa for each individual unit. Meanwhile, for water absorption, the percentage of water absorption of brick should be less than 12% [1,2]. From this study, it was found that, the replacement of sand by EPS give significant impact towards strength and water absorption performance of concrete brick.