MECHANICAL PROPERTIES OF STRUCTURAL AERATED LIGHTWEIGHT CONCRETE REINFORCED WITH IRON LATHING WASTE

Abstract

Currently, the industry of construction requires finding efficient materials to increase the durability and strength as well as decreasing the concrete structure’s total weight. Therefore, an effort was made in this study for examining the impact of adding waste materials such as the iron lathing waste fibers. Iron lathe wastes have been deformed into twisted strips with a width of (4mm) and sieving size of (4.75-10) mm. The experimental investigation has been achieved with the use of four mixes related to light-weight concretes, involving different volumetric ratios of the iron lathing waste fibers as (0%, 1 %, 1.5 %, and 2 %). With the increase in the volume fraction of the lathing waste fibers from 0% to 2%, the results showed that there were a significant increase and improvement in compressive strength, splitting tensile strength, flexural tensile strength, static modulus of elasticity, and dynamic modulus of elasticity by 12%, 67.5%, 134%, 27%, and 26% respectively. This indicates that the iron waste fibers have an important impact in enhancing the mechanical properties of the hardened concrete through the structural change in the concrete matrix.