Moisture Absorption and Thermal Expansion of Building Blocks Bound with Bitumen
Abstract: This paper described
about masonry wall building blocks that incorporate waste aggregate materials,
namely steel slag, crushed glass, and coal fly ash. The binder used was 50 pen
bitumen. The investigation was carried out at the University of Leeds United
Kingdom (UK). The samples were produced by hot mixing the waste aggre-gates,
compacting by static compaction, then applying heat curing to the compacted
samples to harden the bitu-men binder. The objective of the investigation was
mainly to evaluate the building blocks compressive strength and volume
stability (expansion and shrinkage) due to moisture and thermal exposure. It
was found that the sample’s compressive strength was comparable to concrete
block commonly used in the UK. The volume stabil-ity of the sample was found
largely irreversible due to moisture exposure, but highly reversible due to
heat conditioning. The samples gave
coefficient of thermal expansion comparable to clay bricks and concrete masonry blocks, and coefficient of moisture
expansion similar to clay bricks. The blocks are suggested to be used for
internal walls and are not exposed to outdoor weather, and should be protected
with sand cement mix plaster.
Author: I Nyoman Arya Thanaya
Journal Code: jptsipilgg090004
