The use of raw rice husks to enhance clay bricks strength for building construction

Abstract

A development of new innovative and the low cost of building material that is composed from the organic waste material is growing interest in the construction communities. The study is evaluated the performance of modified clay bricks, which used the organic waste material as the replacement mixture. The study applied the raw rice husks as the waste material, which is widely available and extremely cheap resource in the Northern of Peninsular Malaysia. The clay and rice husks are obtained from the paddy field around Wang Ulu, Perlis and Syarikat Padi Beras Nasional (BERNAS), respectively. The performance of modified clays such as physical and engineering properties, is compared with the traditional clay. Samples of clay bricks were prepared for four different parameters which are control bricks (traditional bricks), CB, B0.5, B 1.0 and B1.5 for 0%, 0.5%, 1.0% and 1.5% of the rice husks used respectively. The result showed, as the percentage of rice husks increased, the value of compressive strength and density obtained for the modified are decreased. The rate of water absorption is also increased for the modified clay. The modified clay brick with 0.5% of rice husks, is showed the best of clay bricks in properties with 13.107 Mpa of compressive strength, 17.3% of water absorption, and 875.7 kg/m3 of brick density. The result clearly indicated that the uses of the rice husks which are organic wastes have a good performance in term of strength and properties however, can only be use for single buildings or as non-loading bearing clay bricks.