ASSESSMENT OF CONCRETE PAVER BLOCKS WITH ALTERNATIVE SAND MATERIALSaravanan S.S. and P. JagadeeshAbstract All over the world the availability of natural sand is in acute shortage due to over exploitation of sand from the river beds so almost all the countries are doing research for alternative sand material for preparation of concrete. In India also the availability of natural sand material is lesser and also most of the states in India were already abandoned for excavation from river beds due to depletion of water table. In the present work crushed sand is used for replacement of natural sand which is crushed in Vertical Shaft Impact crushers (VSI). This crushed sand is termed as Manufactured sand (M-Sand) in the present work. This M-sand is used for making concrete for preparation of concrete paver blocks with replacement of natural sand from 0% to 100% with various proportions at an increment of 10%. The mechanical properties like split tensile strengths, flexural strength, and durability properties such as Abrasion resistance, freez-Thaw showed that it significantly improved compared with control mix concrete. The paver blocks are the new ideology in construction of roads in low traffic, medium traffic and heavy traffic roads. This research is an attempt made for utilizing the M-Sand in commercial production of value added products such as paver blocks. This will be beneficial to the environmentally and ecologically sustainable development of new world towards a greener world since use of natural sand produces the depletion of ground water table in the world as a whole and India in particular. |