COMPARING THE COMPRESSIVE STRENGTH OF CONCRETE

ABSTRACT

The cost of river sand is much due to excessive cost of transportation from its natural sources. Also huge amount of depletion of these sources leads to environmental problems. Also environmental transportation and other constraints make the availability and use of river sand less attractive, hence it is very necessary now to find substitutes or replacements for river sand. The method used for the analysis was cast in cube method where concrete were casted into cubes and was cured to a maximum of 28 days to get the maximum compressive strength of the concrete. The result for the sieve analysis carried out showed that the aggregates fell within the upper and lower limits of grading requirement. The specific gravity of river sand used was 2.6 while that of quarry dust was determined and the results obtained was 2.5.The slump obtained from specimens with different W/C of 0.5 and 0.55 ranged from 51 – 75mm. The concrete produced from 100% quarry dust as fine aggregate with a water-cement ratio of 0.5 produced a maximum compressive strength of 29.00 N/mm3 at the highest curing age in days, while sand alone as fine aggregate in one of the concrete mix, produced the compressive strength of 28.17 N/mm3 . Hence, the use of quarry dust in construction is considered more economical since it offers optimum utilization and it is commonly available at different quarry sites.