Usage potential of recycled aggregates in mortar and concrete

Abstract

With the rapid growth in construction sector, it becomes all the more important to assess the amount of Construction and Demolition (C & D) waste being generated and analyze the practices needed to handle and use this waste before final disposal. This serves waste management and disposal issues, paving way to waste utilization in construction industry from the sustainability point of view. C & D waste constitutes a major bulk of total solid waste produced in the world. In this work, an attempt is made to study the performance of concrete using water soaked Recycled Coarse Aggregates (RCA) in replacement levels of 0%, 25%, 50%, 75% and 100% to Natural Coarse Aggregates (NCA). Experiments were designed and conducted to study the performance of RCA based concrete. Further suitable performance enhancement techniques to RCA based concrete were attempted, to achieve compressive strength at least equal to or more than that for no RCA based concrete (control concrete). Performance enhancement study is reported here for 50% and 100% RCA based concretes. All four techniques attempted have given favorable results encouraging use of RCA based concretes with full replacement levels, to adopt RCA based concrete in structural applications, without any kind of concern to the stake holder. Further attempts have also been made to use Recycled Fine Aggregates (RFA) with appropriate modifications to serve as fine aggregates in mortar and concrete. Using RFA blended with river sand fractions as well as RFA with Iron Ore Tailings (IOT) fractions, have given good results to serve as fine aggregates to the extent of 100% replacement levels in mortars and concretes. � 2017 Techno-Press, Ltd.