Abstract:
With the increasing population of the world, the rate of development of
infrastructure is increasing day by day; which has placed a massive demand for
natural aggregates. Besides, huge amount of demolished construction wastes
are generated all over the world which creates pressure on the environment as
well as landfills. Therefore, it is necessary to find a sustainable solution to adopt
these C&D wastes as an alternative to natural aggregates for construction
purposes. Therefore, the objective of the present study is to explore the
influence of superplasticizers while adopting recycled brick aggregate (RBA) in
the sustainable concrete application as a coarse aggregate. Six different mixes
are considered with 100% replacement of recycled brick aggregate and three
diverse water-cement (w/c) ratios, such as 0.40, 0.45, and 0.50. To improve the
workability and mechanical characteristics of concrete a superplasticizer is
used as an admixture. Fresh properties of concrete, compressive strength at
normal and high temperatures, flexural strength and splitting tensile strength
are presented. The results indicate that addion of superplasticizer improves
slump values and reduces air voids of concrete. Although strengths of RBA
concrete are lesser than the virgin brick aggregate concrete, they are still
satisfactory in the application for structural concrete and can be also
significantly improved by incorporating admixture. Finally, this research will
help to recycle the brick aggregate instead of dumping it as waste in a landfill.
