Concrete mix using solid waste aggregates (Coconut shell concrete)

Abstract

Now days the cost of construction is increasing day by day due to increase in the prices of the building materials. The main ingredients of the concrete are coarse aggregate, fine aggregate and cement. Every construction company mainly depends on these ingredients for the production of concrete. In the present scenario most of the research work is done on how to reduce the cost of construction by increasing the strength of the concrete. Depending up on the properties many of the waste materials are used in the concrete as the partial replacement of aggregates. Mostly fly ash,rice husk ash and blast furnace slag are found to be suitable for replacing the fine aggregate partially in concrete. Agriculture is the major occupation of the people in India and coconut production is one of the major agriculture production in India. The shell of the coconut is an agricultural waste and requires large amount of area for its dumping after its usage. It causes environment pollution if it is not dumped properly and creates major problem. If this coconut shell is used as replacement for coarse aggregate in concrete it gives solution to the major environmental pollution. Experiments have done on the effect of partial replacement of coarse aggregate with coconut shell for different percentages and investigated the properties of this composite concrete In this study, for M20 and M25 grades concrete four different concrete mixes for each grade with various combinations of coconut shell of about 0%, 10%, 20% and 30% were prepared. For each concrete mix three sample specimens were casted. The main focus behind this study is to utilize the agricultural waste like coconut shells which are of low cost when compared to the coarse aggregates and thus giving rise to the topic of how to construct the structures within low cost. In this study a short term analysis, at 28 days, the nature of coconut shell aggregate concrete is studied by conducting some tests like compressive strength, workability tests and comparison of these results are made with the normal concrete. In order to maintain serviceability, durability and strength of the members all the necessary precautions are taken. Thus by adopting this concept it will be very much helpful for the civil engineers and especially the society to fulfill their basic needs like low cost housing.