EXPERIMENTAL STUDY ON ARTIFICIAL LIGHTWEIGHT AGGREGATE USING POLYSTYRENE

Abstract

Due to excessive usage of natural coarse aggregates, the light weight concrete produced from industrial waste
polystyrene is viable source of structural light weight aggregate material. The usage of PLCA (polystyrene lightweight
coarse aggregates) concrete reduces considerably the self-weight of structure. The structural member produced from
utilising PLCA in concrete production not only solves the problem of polystyrene waste disposal but also helps conserve
natural resources.
This paper presents the results of extensive tests to investigate the mixing proportion, density, mechanical properties
(compressive strength, flexural strength and tensile strength) of lightweight concrete made of polystyrene aggregates
with the strength level of 7 to 19.1 MPa and the corresponding density of 15.24 kN/m3 to 24.18 kN/m3.
Material variables include the volume and composition of cement, natural sand, polystyrene aggregate content by
volume. Particular emphasis has been given to study the effect of concrete density on compressive strength, tensile
strengths, flexural and workability. To exploit the potential of using polystyrene concrete as structural element, further
study has been carried out on the flexural behaviour of polystyrene concrete beams with limited experimental data.
The concrete strength is targeted at 20 MPa for all the beams. Experimental results showed that the compressive, tensile
and flexural strength of polystyrene aggregate concrete decreases as the decrease in density of PLCA concrete. It is also
observed that the concrete segregate at lower percentage replacement of natural aggregates with PLCA.