Development of self-compacting lightweight concrete made of palm oil clinker

Abstract

This report presents the findings on development of self-compacting lightweight concrete using lightweight aggregate. In this study, palm oil clinker (POC) is used to replace normal gravel as course aggregate in concrete. There are two types of mix design in this project which are the normal self – compacting concrete as the control mix and the POC mix with 100% POC replacement for course aggregate. Slump flow test is carried out at fresh state to measure the self – compactability of the concrete. At hardened state, compressive strength test is conducted using cubes for these two types of concrete mix at the age of 7 and 28 days. Splitting tensile and flexural strength test were also conducted using cylinders and prisms, on the age of 28 days, respectively and were also wet – cured. The result shows that by using POC as lightweight aggregate and superplasticizer as the admixture, lightweight self – compacting concrete with high workability and strength almost similar to normal self – compacting concrete can be produced. This study also includes a vertical load test on a 500 mm x 500 mm wall with thickness 125 mm for both types of mix design. Throughout the test, data such as load capacity, behavior of cracks and failure mode were observed. The test results showed that specimens with POC achieved almost similar performance in terms of ultimate load capacity with only 14.3% difference.