Civil Engineering and Architecture Vol. 8(5), pp. 1028 - 1038
DOI: 10.13189/cea.2020.080529
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Evaluation of Mechanical and Durability Performance of Coir Pith Ash Blended Cement Concrete


Balagopal V , Viswanathan T. S *
Department of Structural and Geo-technical Engineering, School of Civil Engineering, Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore, India

ABSTRACT

India is one of the prominent producers of coconuts in the world. Along with the desired products, many undesirable by-products are also generated from the coconut and coir industry. Among the various by-products, coir pith and short coir fibres are the major ones and are obtained during the extraction of long coconut fibres. Raw coir pith was heated in a metallic vessel at 450 ℃ to obtain coir pith ash. In this study, the impact of the presence of CPA as a supplementary cementitious material, on the various mechanical and durability parameters are taken into consideration. The various parameters considered for assessing the mechanical performance include compressive strength, split tensile strength, flexural strength and Ultrasonic pulse velocity. Water absorption and resistance to sulphuric acid environments were considered to evaluate the durability of CPA blended concrete. The resistance of CPA blended concrete against sulphuric acid environment was evaluated by considering the variation in weight, water absorption and percentage loss in compressive strength. Five concrete mixes were used for the study with CPA content ranging from 0% to 20%. Indian standard method of concrete mix design with water-cement ratio 0.45 was adopted. To understand the effect of change in water-cement ratio on the durability parameters of concrete, the study also considered other water-cement ratios like 0.40 and 0.50. Results indicated that the mechanical and durability performance improves when CPA is used as supplementary cementitious material. Also, the specimens with water-cement ratio 0.40 performed better than other ratios.

KEYWORDS
Concrete, Supplementary Cementitious Materials, Coir Pith Ash, Durability, Acid Attack

Cite This Paper in IEEE or APA Citation Styles
(a). IEEE Format:
[1] Balagopal V , Viswanathan T. S , "Evaluation of Mechanical and Durability Performance of Coir Pith Ash Blended Cement Concrete," Civil Engineering and Architecture, Vol. 8, No. 5, pp. 1028 - 1038, 2020. DOI: 10.13189/cea.2020.080529.

(b). APA Format:
Balagopal V , Viswanathan T. S (2020). Evaluation of Mechanical and Durability Performance of Coir Pith Ash Blended Cement Concrete. Civil Engineering and Architecture, 8(5), 1028 - 1038. DOI: 10.13189/cea.2020.080529.