Experimental Investigation on the Effect of Manufactured Sand in Concrete

Abstract

Abstract

Concrete is the most widely used construction material owing to its versatile nature. Three fourth of the concrete is made of aggregates, amongst which fine aggregate has massive demand. River sand is the predominantly used fine aggregate, which is under significance because of the increased demand and less availability. The continuous mining of river sand has also affected the environment; ecologically and economically. Manufactured sand offers viable alternative to natural sand, and it is purposely produced by crushing and screening of remains obtained from quarries. Detailed experimental investigation was made on the full replacement of natural sand with manufactured sand as fine aggregate in concrete. The study has been focused on the effect of manufactured sand on mechanical and non-destructive properties of concrete. Mechanical properties such as compressive strength, splitting tensile strength and flexural strength of the concrete were evaluated and compared with control concrete. Also rebound hammer test and ultrasonic pulse velocity test were carried out to have an insight into the quality of the concrete due to effect of aggregate replacement. The test results of this research work implicate that the manufactured sand from various places in concrete had a considerable effect on the mechanical properties of the concrete and the variations of the strength properties of the mixes are explained. The compressive strength based on rebound number was arrived from non-destructive testing results and their correlations were studied.

Keywords: Manufactured sand, gradation, UPV, dynamic modulus, fine aggregate, strength.