Use of Agricultural Waste Fibres as Enhancement of Soil Blocks for Low-Cost Housing in Ghana
Use of Agricultural Waste Fibres as Enhancement of Soil Blocks for Low-Cost Housing in Ghana
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Date
2016-03
Authors
Danso,Humphery
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ResearchGate
Abstract
The work presented in this thesis investigates the properties and internal mechanism of
novel soil blocks made with three different agricultural waste fibres in two different soil
types. Experiments were conducted and the main variables include: three fibres (bagasse,
coconut and oil palm), three soil samples (Brown, Red and Horsea Island), five fibre
content (0, 0.25, 0.5, 0.75 and 1 wt.%) and five fibre aspect ratios (25, 50, 75, 100 and
125). Tests conducted include density, compressive, tensile, erosion, wearing, SEM, CT
scan, optical microscope analysis and pull-out.
Initial tests on small cylindrical specimens produced to determine the effect of
compaction rate for producing soil blocks on the strength properties found that, although
the low rate of compaction achieved slightly better performance characteristics, there was
not a statistically significant difference between the soil blocks produced with low and
high compaction rates.
Investigation on the effect of aspect ratio of the fibres on the mechanical properties of soil
blocks revealed that, in general, an increase in fibre aspect ratio has a positive effect (20-
25% improvement) on the strength of enhanced soil blocks. Fibre lengths of 50, 80 and
38 mm for coconut, bagasse and oil palm fibres, respectively, produced maximum
strength, only bagasse showed an optimum. Another investigation on the properties of
soil blocks reinforced with different fibre contents found that, the inclusion of fibres,
enhanced the properties of soil blocks (16-57% strength and 20-70% durability
improvement), with optimum performance generally at 0.5wt.% fibre content.
Furthermore, the high clayey soil performed better in all the properties of the fibre
reinforced soil blocks than the low clay soil.
The study on the internal mechanism of fibre-soil matrix interaction established that fibres
in the soil matrix are randomly distributed with gaps between the fibres and matrix due
to fibre shrinkage. It also found that natural fibres in soil matrix can either be pulled out
or break under load. In addition, fibres in the soil matrix undergo changes in size when
wet and at its natural moisture content state. In general, the work concludes that the fibre
reinforced soil blocks are suitable for use as a building material especially for less
economically developed (LED) countries, particularly Ghana, because of the abundance
and low-cost of the selected fibres
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Citation
Danso, H. (2016). Use of agricultural waste fibres as enhancement of soil blocks for low-cost housing in Ghana (Doctoral dissertation, University of Portsmouth, School of Civil Engineering and Surveying).