article · International Journal of Concrete Structures and Materials
Replacing fifteen percent of fine aggregate sand with waste sawdust creates an eco-friendly concrete mixture for reinforced concrete beams. An experimental evaluation tested five beams under four-point loading to examine flexural performance and the impact of external strengthening using wooden plates. Although adding sawdust reduces concrete workability, compressive strength, and splitting tensile strength, the ultimate load capacity of unstrengthened sawdust concrete beams drops by only four percent compared to standard concrete beams. Furthermore, attaching a wooden plate secured with both an adhesive layer and two steel angles substantially improves structural performance. This configuration delivered the highest load-bearing capacity of all tested specimens, exceeding the control beam by twenty percent. These results indicate that combining waste sawdust concrete with timber-based strengthening methods can produce viable, sustainable structural components without compromising overall flexural load performance.
Concrete production consumes massive amounts of natural sand, driving environmental disruption. Incorporating industrial waste like sawdust into structural concrete offers a pathway to lower raw material extraction. Demonstrating that timber plates and simple steel fixings can compensate for slight strength reductions enables builders to consider bio-based, lower-carbon materials for structural components without sacrificing ultimate load performance.
This experimental work provides applied, laboratory-tested evidence for construction companies and precast concrete manufacturers exploring bio-waste aggregate substitutes. The approach could enable lower-carbon structural components strengthened with timber for building projects. However, the technology remains at an early experimental stage, having only been tested on five small beam specimens, meaning substantial structural scaling, environmental durability testing, and regulatory validation are required before commercial use.
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Abstract In this paper, the effectiveness of the strengthening by a wooden plate for reinforced concrete (RC) beams that incorporate waste sawdust (SD) as a partial substitute for fine aggregate (sand) has been investigated. To this end, two types of concrete mixtures were made: normal concrete (NC) and sawdust concrete (SDC), which was made by substituting 15% of the volume of sand with SD. Five RC beams (100 mm in depth, 200 mm in width, and 1500 mm in length) were experimentally tested for flexural behavior under four-point loading. Three strengthening schemes were used in this study. The first scheme used a wooden plate that was only fixed by an adhesive layer. The second and third schemes were applied by a wooden plate, which was fixed by an adhesive layer and steel angles (two and eleven angles). The findings of the study indicate that although the concrete's workability, compressive, and splitting tensile strengths were reduced with the addition of SD, the ultimate load of the beam with SD was lower than that of the control beam, with a slight variation of approximately 4%. Moreover, strengthening the RC beam with a wooden plate and two steel angles yielded the highest load capacity among all tested beams, 20% higher than the control specimen. The study's findings offered useful information for developing eco-friendly sawdust concrete beams with efficient strengthening techniques for potential future uses.
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DOI: 10.1186/s40069-023-00617-0
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