The green paving block made from the broken lightweight concrete brick: the preliminary study

Abstract

Presently, construction the building walls with lightweight concrete blocks in Thailand is very popular; however, lightweight concrete blocks are easily damaged during transportation to the construction sites. The waste generated from damaged lightweight concrete blocks requires proper management with an additional budget. Reusing the broken lightweight concrete block as aggregate for the concrete paving block is one of the waste management alternatives. Therefore, this research aims to evaluate the characteristics of concrete paving block made by broken lightweight blocks. The tests required by the Thai Industrial Standards Institute were followed in the research. The replacement percentages of the broken block by mixture weight equivalent to 0%,10%,20%, and 30% were employed to reduce the virgin-coarse aggregate used for concrete paving block manufacturing. The test results revealed that the compressive strength of the concrete paving block reduced by 0.06 ksc at every 1% of replacing the virgin aggregate by broken lightweight block. Moreover, the water absorption of the concrete paving block increased with the rise in amount of broken lightweight blocks. These might be caused by the porous cement mortar adhered on the broken lightweight blocks. Therefore, the modification of broken lightweight blocks is required prior to employ this waste as the aggregate for concrete paving block mixture.