Compressive strength of brick made of cemented sand

• Main Author: Muhammad Mubarak Nordin
• Other Authors: Budi Wibawa
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2014
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Civil engineering::Geotechnical
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/60007
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Sandcrete is made from a mixture of sand, cement and water. Primarily used in the African countries such as Nigeria and Ghana as load-bearing and non-load bearing blocks due to the affordability and availability of the constituent materials. These countries have set industrial standards to ensure that the compressive strength of the sandcrete blocks that are produced have minimum strengths that meet the standards. This paper is a continuation of a preceding study for which factors of cement mixture, curing age as well as strain rates were studied. In this paper, the factors of density as well as aspect ratio were studied. Density factors of 0.95, 1.05 and 1.1 with a nominal dry density of 1.75g/cm3 were studied. The aspect ratio of height and diameter with factors of 2.0, 1.4 and 1.0 were also studied. Each test had samples produced and cured for 3, 7, 14 and 28 days. Strain rate, sample mix proportion ratio and the curing conditions were kept constant. A total of 84 samples were produced in the experiment as according to the specific sample mix proportions. After air curing at 95% humidity and 26⁰C (+/-3⁰C), the samples underwent unconfined compressive strength test. It was found that higher density factors yielded higher compressive strength at all ages. Likewise, lower aspect ratios of the blocks yielded higher compressive strength. Samples with longer curing ages also yielded higher compressive strength.