Mechanical and Physical Properties of Soil-Cement Blocks Reinforced with Mineral Wool and Sisal Fiber
Publication: Journal of Materials in Civil Engineering
Volume 29, Issue 3
Abstract
To address the large house-building demand in developing countries, soil can be used as an alternative building material because of its high availability as a source material, its ease of processing, and its low environmental impact. In this work, soil-cement blocks (SCBs) with three different contents of mineral wool waste and soil-cement blocks with three different contents of sisal fiber were fabricated, microstructurally characterized, and tested after curing for moisture absorption, abrasion resistance, compression, bending, and accelerated erosion. An increase of 29% in compression resistance was found when 1% of mineral wool was loaded into the SCBs, whereas an increase of 0.1% of sisal fiber lead to a 20-fold increase of the rupture modulus (). From the results it is observed that both bending strength and compression resistance increased with the addition of mineral wool waste and sisal fiber.
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Acknowledgments
The authors are grateful to Comité para el Desarrollo de la Investigación (CODI) for funding through the project PR14-1-03, Universidad de Antioquia.
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Published In
Journal of Materials in Civil Engineering
Volume 29 • Issue 3 • March 2017
Copyright
© 2016 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Feb 23, 2016
Accepted: Jul 13, 2016
Published online: Sep 23, 2016
Discussion open until: Feb 23, 2017
Published in print: Mar 1, 2017
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