Properties

Of Concrete with Coconut Shell and Fallen Leaves as Aggregate Replacement By Nadine Marie Silva and Noel Calatrava Jr. RATIONALE Man has been using fiber to reinforce building materials for thousands of years for example mud huts using straw in the mix. Asbestos reinforcing was phased out once its health risks became known. Todays fiber reinforced concrete (FRC) is a long way advanced on mud, though. Synthetic (and even natural) fibers may be added to the concrete mix, whether it is to be steel reinforced, or not. A wide range of fibers from fine steel fibers to glass and polypropylene are used today, and new fibers are being explored. Fibers are usually used in concrete to control cracking due to plastic shrinkage and to drying shrinkage. They also reduce the permeability of concrete and thus reduce bleeding of water. Some types of fibers produce greater impact, abrasion, and shatter resistance in concrete. Generally fibers do not increase the flexural strength of concrete, and so cannot replace momentresisting or structural steel reinforcement. Indeed, some fibers actually reduce the strength of concrete. Some recent research indicated that using fibers in concrete has limited effect on the impact resistance of the materials. This finding is very important since traditionally, people think that ductility increases when concrete is reinforced with fibers. The results also indicated that the use of micro fibers offers better impact resistance to that of longer fibers. Furthermore, with the increase of infrastructure development across the world, the demand for construction materials also increased, resulting to the raise in the necessity of concrete, which is a premier civil engineering construction material with aggregates forming on the major part. The use of natural aggregate leads to a question about the preservation of natural aggregates sources. In addition, operations associated with aggregate extraction and processing are the principal causes of environmental concerns. In light of this, in the contemporary civil engineering construction, using alternative materials in place of natural aggregate in concrete production makes concrete as sustainable

and environmentally friendly construction material. Different alternative waste materials and industrial by products such as fly ash, bottom ash, recycled aggregates, foundry sand, china clay sand, crumb rubber, glass were replaced with natural aggregate and investigated properties of the concretes. Apart from above mentioned waste materials and industrial by products, few studies identified that coconut shells, the agricultural by product can also be used as aggregate in concrete. On the other hand, fallen leaves are one of those products from nature, which is considered to be a waste. They are either placed on a stockpile or incinerated to become a useless ash. In light with this, the researchers have proposed to use such waste materials to use as a replacement for aggregate as a property of Concrete. Further explanation would be discussed on the studies succeeding parts.