The use of red earth, lateritic soils and quarry dust as an alternative building material in sandcrete block

Banjo A Akinyemi,Alhassan Elijah,Aladegboye Oluwasegun,Denen T Akpenpuun,Owolaja Glory

doi:10.1016/j.sciaf.2020.e00263

Banjo A Akinyemi, Alhassan Elijah + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sciaf.2020.e00263

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Journal: Scientific African	Publication Date: Jan 16, 2020
Citations: 10	License type: cc-by

Affiliation: Landmark University, University of Ilorin

Abstract

This study investigated the prospect of utilising red earth, quarry dust and laterite as alternative materials to river sand in the production of sandcrete blocks. Compressive strength test was performed on the samples at 7, 14, 21 and 28 curing days in the laboratory. The effect of curing on strength improvement was also studied. Using one way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and Tukey analysis, the results showed that quarry dust and lateritic soil performed relatively better in comparison with the traditional river sand used in sandcrete blocks production. Also there was progressive improvement of the compressive strength of the tested materials over the period of curing regime adopted for the study. Red earth and quarry dusts showed good prospect as alternative to the use of river sand in sandcrete block production for developing nations.

Highlights

In order to provide a sustainable house, most of the people in developing nations would prefer to build low cost housing with locally available materials
After curing the blocks for 7 days the blocks made with cement and river sand had the highest average compressive strength of 2.08 N/mm2 compared with the rest (Fig. 4), the difference between the average compressive strength of the blocks made with cement and quarry dust which is 1.91 N/mm2 is not so much
While those made with the mixture of red earth, laterite and river sand alone has the lowest average compressive strength (0.75 N/mm2)

Summary

Introduction

In order to provide a sustainable house, most of the people in developing nations would prefer to build low cost housing with locally available materials. The impediments to solving the housing problem are scarcity and high cost of building materials. Low-cost housing must rely on locally available raw materials. Such materials must be abundantly available and be renewable in nature. Due to these various reasons, the investigations of alternative materials for the construction of low cost housing have been the focus of many studies in many developing countries [6,7,19,25]. The rock has to be crushed into various sizes and during this process a large cloud

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Conclusion