Flexural strength of oil palm shell reinforcement concrete with high strength steel rebars

Abstract

Concrete has clearly appeared as a choice for a large number of construction and the various structures in the world today. High demand for raw materials caused a decrease in the natural resources of granite and the rising in costs of this material. On the other hand, large dumping of waste from oil palm industry has affected the ecosystems imbalance. Oil palm shell (OPS) is one of the industrial wastes that maybe be used to produce concrete because the variety shape of OPS similar with granite and the nature hard. A study was conducted in the to investigate the behavior of concrete using oil palm shell as coarse aggregate was replaced by 30% and 50%. Among the objectives of this research was to investigate the flexural strength of oil palm shell beam. As a result of this research showed that the concrete using oil palm shell as coarse aggregate. The experiment results show the flexural strength of oil palm shell concrete is 0.741 MPa smaller than normal concrete strength of 5.2 MPa. For the stress-strain curves for oil palm shell and normal concrete beams is 100.83 x 10-6 m/m for beam 30% OPS, 147.54 x 10-6 m/m for beam 50% OPS and 125.59 x 10-6 m/m for normal concrete. Value of the modulus elasticity of normal concrete is 68.04 x 106 N/mm² and value modulus elasticity for oil palm shell concrete lower than standard level. The experiment results show the use of oil palm shell give poor results compared with normal concrete. Conclusions can be drawn is oil palm shell can be used asa lightweight concrete by adding additional material to be more strong.