Utilization of ceramic waste powder and rice husk ash as a partial replacement of cement in concrete

Abstract

Ceramic waste powder (CWP) and rice husk ash (RHA) are one of the highly produced waste materials from tiles industry and rice processing units respectively. Using these materials in concrete as a part replacement for cement offers several advantages like reducing the burden on landfills, reducing the construction cost by replacing costly cement and improvement in performance of concrete etc. due to their mineral composition. In the current study, an effort was made to partly replace the cement with CWP and RHA. Concrete design mix was carried out by using 0, 5, 10, 15 and 20% CWP and varied proportions of RHA were tried on the optimum CWP for cement replacement (0, 5, 10, 15, 20%). Tests were carried out on the fresh and hardened concrete specimens to study the mechanical properties of concrete. Analysis of the test results indicate that 15% CWP yielded best results and 10-15% RHA in combine proportion was found to be the optimum replacement of cement offering higher strength when assessed to the conventional concrete. Maximum compressive strength achieved at 15% CWP and 15% RHA whereas, the flexural strength and split tensile strength were attained at 15% CWP and 10% RHA dosage.