COMPOSITE BEHAVIOR OF CELLULAR CONCRETE ELEMENT WITH AND WITHOUT CLAY INFILL

Abstract

For a variety of purposes, lightweight concrete (LWC) has become a common material for construction. Despite its benefits, which include lightweight, strong thermal characteristics, and fire resistance, LWC has a lower compressive strength than normal weight concrete (NWC), making it undesirable in certain situations. Hence, other alternatives such as cellular concrete components (CCC), which are composed of NWC but have a cellular structure, are being investigated. These components share the same advantages as LWC, including portability, lightweight, enhanced thermal properties, and fire resistance. To develop a lightweight structure, this study incorporates macroscale air voids, such as bioinspired Honeycomb and non-bioinspired Grid voids. The objective of the study is to tackle the issues of LWC while preserving its benefits; CCC has been chosen as an alternative for this reason. However, CCC has a few drawbacks, such as a potential reduction in compressive strength. Recent research has shown that the horizontal compressive strength of CCC is lower than that of LWC. To solve this issue, we propose adding clay to CCC, which could counteract the low compressive strength under horizontal pressure and potentially increase the strength. Including clay into CCC is therefore anticipated to increase their compressive strength. These structures were created using 5% Polylactic Acid (PLA) infill in Additive Manufacturing (AM) by use of Fused Deposition Modelling (FDM) techniques. The finished product was then subjected to compression testing and Digital Image Correlation (DIC) analysis to acquire insight into the mechanical qualities and porosity impacts of this innovative CCC idea. In addition, a comparison was done between the obtained data and the data from NWC cubes and clay cubes. The results revealed that bioinspired macrostructures (Honeycomb), which have a high density (33 % porosity) and mechanical strength, could serve as a feasible substitute for LWCs in non-load-bearing architectural elements.