FEASIBILITY OF USING RICE STRAW IN CONCRETE MANUFACTURE

Abstract

This paper presents results on the physical and chemical properties of Rice Straw Ash (RSA), and deals with the properties of ' fresh and hardened mortar and concrete incorporating the different

percentages of ash. The properties of fresh concrete investigated included workability, setting time, and autogenously temperature rise, and those of the hardened concrete included compressive, splitting tensile, and flexural strengths, modulus of elasticity, resistance to chemical penetration and high temperature. The behavior of R. C. beams such as deflection, longitudinal strains and modulus of rapture were also checked by testing RSA R. C. beams. In addition the properties of the RSA concrete were also compared with those of the control cement concrete. The test results indicate that the RSA is highly pozzolanic and can be used as a supplementary cementing material to produce high-performance concrete, with satisfy the slump, and setting time also the RSA concrete had excellent resistance to chemical penetration. In general the RSA concrete had higher compressive strengths at various ages up to 180 days compared with that of the control concrete. The use of RSA R. C. beams, improved the flexural rigidity and increase the resistance to longitudinal tensile and compressive strains.