Engineering properties of bio-inspired cement mortar containing seashell powder

Abstract

Cement mortar is a semi liquid formed by a composite of cement, sand and water. Generally, cement mortar is used as a medium for bricks laying in construction. Nowadays, the properties of various types of waste materials are studied as construction material in buildings such as blast furnace ash, fly ash and palm oil fuel ash. In this study, the seashell is used as a replacement of building material in cement mortar.Seashell consists of high amount of calcium carbonate that provides remarkable mechanical properties and suitable to be used as building material. The engineering properties of cement mortar is studied, which including the compressive strength, flexural strength, splitting tensile strength, durability, modulus of elasticity in compression, setting time, water absorption and shrinkage. Cockle (Anadaragranosa) and mussel (Pernaviridis) are selected to replace the sand in the cement mortar with a ratio of 0, 25, 50, 75, and 100 percent by total weight of sand. A total number of 2800samples are prepared and tested up to 1 year and subjected to four exposure conditions, which are water, air, natural weather and wet-dry cycle.The replacement of seashell in cement mortar is likely to increase its engineering properties especially compressive strength due to high amount of calcium carbonate.The replacement of seashell in cement mortar will reduce the construction cost, improve the engineering properties of mortar and can be applied in various mortar applications.