Assessment of Physical and Mechanical Behaviour of Foam Concrete using Bottom Ash and Fly Ash

Abstract

Foam concrete is a kind of air inflated lightweight concrete, which doesn’t contain coarse aggregate and can be regarded as an air inflated mortar. Foam concrete is made by adding foam into the cement slurry, the main use of foam in the cement mortar is to create air voids which act as a ball bearings inside the concrete mix. Foam is prepared by using foam generator or it can be made by sonication process of hydrogen peroxide. In this research work foam is formed by the sonication process of hydrogen peroxide separately then the foaming agent is diluted with water and air inflated to create the foam. Bottom ash from thermal power plant is collected and added in different proportions in the concrete mix to study the mechanical behaviour of the foam concrete. Mechanical properties such as compressive strength, split-tensile strength, flexural strength and thermal conductivity tests are carried out under controlled environment. The targeted design densities of all the specimens were expected to be 1600 kg/m3. The binder to filler ratio used in this study is 1:1, with the sand being completely replaced with bottom ash and Fly ash.