Authors Courage Kwasi Dovi | Paul Kwabla Afatsawu
Akatsi College of Education | New Ayoma Jasikan – Father Dogli Memorial Technical lnstitute
Email: paulbless2012@gmail.com | dovicouragekwasi@gmail.com
Abstract
The need to use wastes for locally manufactured building materials has been emphasized in many countries of the world because, of their easy availability and low cost. Bricks also have been regarded as one of the versatile and the oldest materials which have been used extensively in various ways for many constructional works ranging from simple domestic homes to very sophisticated edifice. The purpose of this study is to investigate into the effect of incorporating granite powder waste and polyethylene (pure water sachet) powder into clayey soil matrix to produce burnt bricks. By incorporating these waste materials into soil for burnt brick production, it anticipates less expensive but durable and quality materials to considerably reduce the high housing deficit problems in Ghana, promote effective waste management and solution for future exhaustion of the natural resources and the conservation of not renewable resources. Thorough material analysis such as sieve analysis, sedimentation (hydrometer analysis), Atterberg tests (liquid limit, plastic limit and shrinkage limit) and compaction (protor method) tests were conducted on the soil and the granite powder so as to obtain all the relevant index properties of the materials under consideration. The raw materials were batched by weight of the soil by replacing 10% by weight of the soil with 10% by weight of the granite powder and polyethylene. In other words, the clayey soil was maintained at a constant percentage of 90% while the remaining 10% was proportionally distributed to the two waste materials in a complementary percentage manner. Thus, (0% + 10%, 2.5% +7.5%, 5% +5%). The bricks were fired at a temperature of 11000C. The mechanical properties of the bricks evaluated were compressive strength, flexural strength, abrasion resistance, water absorption and dry density. The mean values of all the mechanical properties of the bricks produced were directly proportional to the percentage content of the granite powder added but inversely proportional to the percentage content of the polyethylene powder. It was observed that maximum of 10% incorporation of only granite powder in the soil produced specimen bricks with the best mechanical properties, while the same percentage content of 10% of only polyethylene powder produced specimen bricks with the least mechanical properties. However, a combined inclusion of the two wastes in the soil, indicated that 7.5% of the granite powder and 2.5% of the polyethylene all by weight of the soil produced specimens’ bricks with good satisfactory results.
Keywords: Strength and Durability Properties, Fired Bricks, Polythene Powder and Granite Powder, Clayey Soil
