Structural Performance of Composite Walls Made Out of Recycled Construction Waste and Stabilized Rammed Earth

Abstract

In developing countries accumulation of unmanaged industrial construction waste is becoming a major environmental concern since it ends up as piled up landfills. Innovation of sustainable construction materials through recycling of such waste appears to be a viable solution to this problem. Recycled construction, materials will also be an economical option in designing green buildings. There has been no significant research carried out to utilize construction waste as a walling material. The aim of this research is to find a solution for the construction waste in the form of a walling material for building construction. Waste materials such as concrete, plasters, pebbles and bricks with mortar are selected for the study and they were crushed and sieved through 10mm-15mm and 15mm-20mm sizes separately. A mix proposition was selected based on standard testing for grading of aggregate. The processed construction waste was mixed with laterite soil and cement. This mixture was used as dry ingredients rammed of stabilized rammed earth walls. The optimum proportion of construction waste, soil and cement was established using experiment results of cube testing. The recommended mix proportion was used to construct the wall panels for compressive testing. Durability of the proposed walling material was tested using accelerated spring erosion method. The strength and durability of the composite material has been found satisfactory, which paves the path for another green construction material.