Moisture Absorption and Thermal Expansion of Building Blocks Bound with Bitumen

This paper described about masonry wall building blocks that incorporate waste aggregate materials, namely steel slag, crushed glass, and coal fly ash. The binder used was 50 pen bitumen. The investigation was carried out at the University of Leeds United Kingdom (UK). The samples were produced by hot mixing the waste aggregates, compacting by static compaction, then applying heat curing to the compacted samples to harden the bitumen binder. The objective of the investigation was mainly to evaluate the building blocks compressive strength and volume stability (expansion and shrinkage) due to moisture and thermal exposure. It was found that the sample’s compressive strength was comparable to concrete block commonly used in the UK. The volume stability of the sample was found largely irreversible due to moisture exposure, but highly reversible due to heat conditioning. The samples gave coefficient of thermal expansion comparable to clay bricks and concrete masonry blocks, and coefficient of moisture expansion similar to clay bricks. The blocks are suggested to be used for internal walls and are not exposed to outdoor weather, and should be protected with sand cement mix plaster.

Abstract licence: CC BY-ND

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