Sawdust from timber waste as fine aggregate replacement material in concrete

Abstract

This study is to determine the effect of sawdust as sand replacement material on the workability and strength of concrete. From the results obtained, the optimum value of sawdust in the percentage specified. The experiment is a slump test, test compression and absorption tests. 48 cube concrete samples were prepared in this study including control concrete. Concrete were designed based on Grade 20 with the mix ratio of 1:2:4 (cement : sand : coarse aggregate). Sawdust were used as sand replacement with proportion of 10 %, 20 % and 30 %. The average workability value for samples 10 %, 20 % and 30 % is 18.3 mm, 24.67 mm and 32.33 mm respectively. The results of slump test was found that the concrete with higher percentage of sawdust has lower workability. For the compressive strength result, the concrete with 10 % sawdust content provides the highest strength of 25.663 MPa compare to the other percentages of sawdust. From the graph of compressive strength versus percentage of sawdust, sawdust can be used to replace the fine aggregate in the range 20 %.