Kim Hung Mo

A Review on the Use of Agriculture Waste Material as Lightweight Aggregate for Reinforced Concrete Structural Members

The agriculture industry is one of the main industries in the Southeast Asia region due to its favourable conditions for plantations. In fact, Southeast Asia region is the world’s largest producer of palm oil and coconut. Nevertheless, vast plantation of these agriculture products leads to equally large amount of waste materials emanating from these industries. Previously, researchers have attempted to utilize the resulting waste materials such as oil palm shell, palm oil clinker, and coconut shell from these industries as lightweight aggregate to produce structural grade lightweight aggregate concrete. In order to promote the concept of using such concrete for actual structural applications, this paper reviews the use of such agriculture-based lightweight aggregate concrete in reinforced concrete structural members such as beam and slab, which were carried out by researchers in the past. The behaviour of the structural members under flexural, shear, and torsional load was also summarized. It is hoped that the knowledge attained from the paper will provide design engineers with better idea and proper application of design criteria for structural members using such agriculture waste as lightweight aggregate.

Properties of metakaolin-blended oil palm shell lightweight concrete

In this paper, the effect of partial replacement of cement with metakaolin (MK) on the strength properties of oil palm shell (OPS) lightweight concrete was investigated. Generally, 5–20% of partial cement replacement with MK enhanced the compressive, splitting tensile and flexural strengths as well as modulus of elasticity of OPS concrete (OPSC). Though the 28 day compressive strength of the OPSC was found in the range of 39–47 MPa, the highest compressive strength was obtained for the mix with 10% replacement of MK. Similar replacement level of MK was found optimum for both the splitting tensile and flexural strengths. In addition, the strength efficiency of OPSC with MK as partial cement replacement was also investigated and it was found that the increase in the replacement level of MK up to 20% resulted in 49% increase in the strength efficiency for the OPSC.

Ductility behaviours of oil palm shell steel fibre-reinforced concrete beams under flexural loading

Abstract In the effort of developing sustainable concrete, studies on the replacement of conventional coarse aggregates with local waste material are increasing. The new oil palm shell fibre-reinforced concrete (OPSFRC) utilises Malaysia’s waste material and is emerging as a promising sustainable concrete attributed to its lightweight and enhanced concrete properties. In this study, the flexural behaviours of OPSC and OPSFRC beams (with steel fibres .25, .50, .75 and 1.00% by volume) were investigated. The results show that the addition of steel fibres improved both the mechanical properties and moment capacities of OPSFRC specimens. However, the OPSFRC exhibited reduced deflection at failure of about 30–40% relative to the OPSC beams. Meanwhile, the steel fibres significantly improved the failure load to ultimate load ratios of OPSFRC to .65–.80 compared to the ratio of .19 as in OPSC. In addition, different approaches to compute the ductility ratios of OPSFRC beams are also conducted and compared.

Bond strength evaluation of palm oil fuel ash-based geopolymer normal weight and lightweight concretes with steel reinforcement

Abstract This article presents a comparison of the bond behaviour between palm oil fuel ash (POFA)-derived geopolymer and conventional cement-based normal weight and lightweight concretes. A total of 16 variables were tested, which includes concrete cover (50 and 100 mm), bar diameter (12 and 16 mm) and types of concrete (POFA-based geopolymer normal/ lightweight concrete and cement-based normal/lightweight concrete). Results showed that the bond strength of cement-based concretes had higher critical bond stress and ultimate bond strength as well as lower slip at the ultimate bond strength compared to the corresponding POFA-based geopolymer concretes. The cement-based and geopolymer lightweight concrete specimens also exhibited greater bond strength than the normal weight concrete specimens. All of the concrete specimens generally exhibited similar bond stress-slip curves. Besides that, bond strength models proposed in the past predicted satisfactory match (difference of up to 35%) to the experimental ultimate bond strength values in the case of cement-based normal weight concrete and geopolymer concrete whereas a difference in the range of 16–138% was found for the case of lightweight concrete.