Journals Proceedings

Abstract

To produce concrete which is a common construction materials, different types of aggregates are used. Those aggregates comes from the natural resources and artificial resourches causing decrease of natural reasourches. Using huge amount of natural reasourches is a bad impact on the eco system. Now a days it is common consideration to use the agricultural waste as construction materials in production of concrete. The country like malaysia in tropical region produces a lot of agricultural waste in oil palm industries. The on going researches on oil palm shell encourage to use it in concrete as aggrigate replacement. The objective of this reasearch is to determine the effect of water/cementratios (w/c) on the mechanical properties of oil palm shell concrete (OPSC). The w/c changes by the changes of cement content in the concrete and all other parameters are fixed on the study. The compressive strength, spliting tensile strength, flexural strength changes are studied due to the changes of water/cement ratios from 0.30 to 0.55. the heighest compressive strength is 47 MPa at 28 day incorporating w/c=0.30. Though, using w/c=0.43 the compressive strength of concrete is 23MPa at 28 days which is the grade of structural lightweight concrete. The w/c ratios have significant effect on the compressive strength, splitting tensile strength and flexural strength of OPSC. However, it can be concluded that the maximum w/c=0.43 can be used to produce the structural lightweight concrete using waste oil palm shell as a coarse aggregate in concrete.