RICE HUSK ASH - A SUSTAINABLE MATERIAL FOR PARTIAL REPLACEMENT WITH CEMENT IN CONCRETE

Civil Engineering

Rapid increase in construction activities has led to a shortage of conventional construction materials with increase in demand of non-conventional sources of construction materials which will prove sustainability. At present, cost of construction material has become a major issue and thus it affects the housing delivery in world. The effective housing techniques deal with reduction in cost of construction as well as providing strength to buildings. use of agricultural by-product i.e. rice husk as a partial replacement with the conventional fine aggregates is expected to serve the purpose of encouraging housing developers in building construction. Rice husk is produced in about 100 million tons per annum in India. Twenty kg of rice husk are obtained from 100 kg of rice. It contains organic substances and 20% inorganic material. Ash from rice is obtained as a result of combustion of rice husk at suitable temperature. this paper focuses on the addition of Furnace Incinerated Rice Husk Ash (RHA) into blended cement OPC was replaced with RHA by weight at 0%, 5%, 10%, 15%, 20% and 25%. 0% replacement served as the control. Compacting factor test was carried out on fresh concrete while Compressive Strength test was carried out on hardened 150mm concrete cubes after 7, 14 and 28 days curing in water. The results revealed that the Compacting factor decreased as the percentage replacement of OPC with RHA increased. The compressive strength of the hardened concrete also decreased with increasing OPC replacement with RHA. It is recommended that further studies be carried out to gather more facts about the suitability of partial replacement of OPC with RHA in concrete.

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