Ecology, Environment and Conservation Paper

BEHAVIOUR OF FERRO-CEMENT LAMINATES WITH INDUSTRIAL WASTE-STEEL SLAG UNDER FLEXURE

J. Sridhar and R. Malathy

Abstract

Ferro-cement comprises more than 95% of its volume as mortar matrix, so great care should be taken in choosing constituent material. The construction industry consumes a large quantity of natural resources such as water, sand and gravel as raw materials so the demand for sand and gravel continues to increase. Certain waste materials produced in manufacturing industries like steel slag, copper slag etc. have similar properties as that of sand and gravel. The utilisation of such materials as raw materials in construction will reduce the environmental impact due to mining of sand and gravel. This situation has warranted the need for exploring alternatives for granular sandy material. This problem is now being solved to some extent by substituting river sand with industrial by- products like steel slag. This paper deals with experimental study on flexural behaviour of ferro-cement laminates with steel slag replacement as fine aggregate for different volume fractions of galvanised square weld mesh. An analytical model has been proposed to determine the ultimate moment carrying capacity of ferro-cement laminates under flexure to validate the experimental results. The variables considered in this study are, volume fraction, and steel slag content of 0% to 50% by weight of fine aggregate.