Designing cement mortars modified with cork and rubber waste using theory of the experiment

Abstract

The article concerns the possibility of obtaining modified cement mortars and assessing their selected properties, i.e. bending and compressive strength, volume density of hardened mortars and water absorption. The modification consisted in a partial (0-50% vol.) substitution of sand by waste, crushed rubber, and cork. In the mortar design process, the theory of the experiment was used. The central composite design used available in the Statistica software package was response surface. This approach allowed to significantly reduce the number of experiments, reduce costs, and at the same time keep the maximum information about the mortars tested. The conducted research showed that waste materials can be an alternative to natural aggregates in the process of obtaining light mortars.