Correlations Between Compressive, Flexural and Tensile Strengths of Foamed Concrete Strengthened with Oil Palm Biomass Wastes

Abstract

Owing its superior features, such as low in density, excellent thermal properties and great fire resistance performance, foamed concrete is gaining acceptance in the construction industry. Nevertheless, foamed concrete is weak in tension. Foamed concrete reinforced with fibers has amplified due to its boosted properties after cracking of the cementitious matrix. Hence, fibers from spikelets and stalks from oil palm biomass wastes were used to scrutinize the correlations between compressive, flexural and tensile strengths of foamed concrete in this study. The fibers content was maintained to 0.45% of volume fraction for all mixes and the mixes were modified to different densities which were 600kg/m3, 1200kg/m3 and 1800kg/m3. Then, the compressive, flexural and tensile strengths of the foamed concrete were measured at 7, 28, 60 and 180 day. The result showed a general trend that the engineering properties of foamed concrete increased as its density increased and the desirable result could be achieved with the inclusion of stalks and spikelets in the foamed concrete. Finally, the empirical equations were established and coefficient of determination (R2) was obtained at different ages through the regression analysis. The comparison between the correlations of the engineering properties, made in terms of R2 of the polynomial regression, showed that all of the relations were obtained high value which is in range 0.96-0.99.