Abstract
The development of sustainable lightweight materials is a promising field solution in this era. The production of sustainable materials by replacing coarse aggregates with some lightweight alternative provides a good quality construction material. In this study, rocky coarse aggregates were replaced by an ultra-lightweight material (i.e., expanded polystyrene beads) to produce an equivalent rock-solid mass of concrete. Using an M15 grade of concrete composition, expanded polystyrene (EPS) beads were added in place of aggregates in amounts ranging from 5% to 40% at a water–cement (w/c) ratio of 0.60. The specimen size as per American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) specification was 150 mm in diameter and 300 mm in length. Furthermore, statistical analysis for the relationship study for destructive testing (DT) (i.e., compressive test machine) and non-destructive testing (NDT) (i.e., rebound hammer and ultrasonic pulse velocity (UPV)) has been performed at developed specimens under 7- and 28-day curing conditions. In the end, the results showed that NDT predicts higher compressive strength than that of DT with the addition of EPS beads up to 20% aggregate replacement, after that it is vice versa for up to 40% aggregate replacement. This study will not only help in the production of sustainable lightweight materials, but especially concrete block production can also be performed at a large scale as a sustainable engineering solution.
Highlights
Lightweight material production is destined to become a dominant building material in the new era [1]
The abasic material involved in thebepreparation of Expandable polystyrene (EPS)-beads concrete involves cement, graphical representation will plotted to understand thelightweight range utilization for produced lightweight concrete as well. and EPS beads
Portland Cement Grade 53 of Type-1 according to ASTM C-150 provisions [36] has been used
Summary
Lightweight material production is destined to become a dominant building material in the new era [1]. The basic constituents of concrete are cement, fine aggregate (sand), coarse aggregate, and water [2,3]. Concrete is extremely hard and rigid, and its thermal as well as natural qualities are not very high [4]. With the passage of time, concrete demand in the construction industry has increased. A large quantity of concrete is employed all over the globe for creating structures like dams, bridges, and multi-story edifices [5]. The density of traditional concrete (regular weight concrete) is 2400 kg/m3 and commonly used for regular routine construction works [6]. Because of the Processes 2019, 7, 791; doi:10.3390/pr7110791 www.mdpi.com/journal/processes
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