Strength Performance of Oil Palm Shell Lightweight Aggregate Concrete

Abstract

The concrete consumption that is high in the construction industry had resulted in uncontrolled aggregates exploitation. The extraction of these natural resources has raised great environment concerns that the use of waste materials as replacement of aggregates is proposed. Oil palm shell lightweight aggregate concrete (OPS LWAC) is produced by full replacement of oil palm shell (OPS) to coarse aggregate. OPS is the lightweight aggregates that potentially produce lightweight aggregate concrete (LWAC). Palm oil fuel ash (POFA) is also the byproduct of the palm oil industry that can be utilized to partially replace the fine aggregates. The objective of this study is to investigate the effect of POFA as partial fine aggregates replacement on density, compressive and tensile strength of OPS LWAC and to determine the optimum replacement percentage of fine aggregates with POFA. The control mixes were prepared with 100% OPC in the concrete while modified mixes contained various percentages of POFA, which were 5%, 10%, 15% and 20% as the replacement of fine aggregate. The specimens of cubes sizes 100 mm x 100 mm x 100 mm and cylindrical specimens with diameter of 100 mm and height of 200 mm were prepared and tested. The concrete mixtures were mixed according to the Department of Environment (DoE) method followed by the trial mixed. Mixes with 10% replacement of POFA to fine aggregate obtained the highest compressive strength and tensile splitting tensile strength which were 26.3 MPa and 2.37 MPa respectively. The property of POFA plays a role in the concrete strength determination. The higher replacement percentages resulted in lower density of OPS LWAC.