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Influence of mud waste and straw grass addition in fired bricks production: technical properties evaluation

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Abstract

For ages, the building materials industry has made use of mud bricks as the simplest and most ecological class of natural construction material. In the current scenario, the industry has focused on developing new technological engineered building materials to minimize non-renewable resource use and boost building enclosures comfort. In the present study, mud construction and demolition (MCD) rubble and straw grass material (SGM) made from Pennisetum purpureum plant have been combined with clay material to produce modeled fired clay bricks (FCB). The raw materials were characterized for their physical, chemical, mineral and thermal properties, and found suitable for use in FCB formulation. Several experimental tests including linear shrinkage, weight loss on ignition, apparent porosity, compressive strength, fired density and thermal conductivity were carried out to evaluate the influence of these wastes on the technical quality of the bricks. The various tests showed that bricks containing 15 wt% MCD and 7.5 wt% SGM were the most optimized samples as these bricks exhibited compressive strength values of 10 MPa for load-bearing structural construction application, 1.67 g/cm3 fired density and 0.56 W/mK thermal conductivity that represented 30% improvement in thermal insulation.

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Data availability

The data gathered will be made available on request.

Code availability

The authors declare that no code is used for the purpose of this article.

Abbreviations

MCD:

Mud construction and demolition

SGM:

Straw grass material

FCB:

Fired clay brick

GGBS:

Ground granulated blast furnace slag

SEM:

Scanning electron microscopy

HHV:

Higher heating value

XRF :

X-ray fluorescence

LOI:

Loss on ignition

A:

Ash

XRD:

X-ray diffraction

TG-DTA:

Thermogravimetric and differential thermal analysis

BTS:

Brick test sample

OMC:

Optimum moisture content

L:

Litres

PSD:

Particle size distribution

MDD:

Maximum dry density

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Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the support of the staff and technicians of Centralized Instrumentation Service Laboratory (CISL) and Manufacturing Engineering Department, Annamalai University, Tamil Nadu, for their technical assistance. In addition, we acknowledge that the graphics in this article are sketched through a licenced Origin 2022 Pro and Microsoft Word 2021 softwares.

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This research did not receive any specific grant or funding from agencies in the public, commercial or not-for-profit organizations.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Applied Physics, School of Physical Sciences, C. K. Tedam University of Technology and Applied Sciences (CKT-UTAS), Box 24, Navrongo, Ghana

    Aaron N. Adazabra & Charity Tiose

  2. Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, Annamalai University, Annamalai Nagar, Chidambaram, Tamil Nadu, 608002, India

    G. Viruthagiri

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  1. Aaron N. Adazabra
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  3. Charity Tiose
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ANA was involved in conceptualization, methodology, investigation and writing—original draft. GV and CT were responsible for conceptualization, methodology, and writing—reviewing and editing.

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Correspondence to Aaron N. Adazabra.

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Adazabra, A.N., Viruthagiri, G. & Tiose, C. Influence of mud waste and straw grass addition in fired bricks production: technical properties evaluation. Innov. Infrastruct. Solut. 8, 306 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41062-023-01285-5

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