A study of Kaolin as partial replacement in producing concrete brick

Abstract

During the nature disaster such as Tsunami, earth quake and flooding, many houses were collapsed and need to be developed back in short time. But the requirement of construction material especially brick or block in one time is very difficult to produce by manufacturer. Bricks which can give better strength in short time after production is very precedence. So, to make the brick is hardened than before, brick are produce by using kaolin as cement replacement. It shows that, by using this method, after 24 hours the strength is higher than normal brick which has been dried for 4 days. K-brick strength achieved 50% within 48 hours after casting compared to normal sand brick. Hence, it reduces cost in term of brick production, workers, raw materials, transportation and storage. By using this new method in bricks productions, it can help to construct fast, tough structure and safe brick. This paper describes experimental study on replacing cement in conventional brick with kaolin to produce a rapid set brick. Mixture proportions were varied to investigate the strength to obtain the best result. The properties of brick are compared. The best brick is 10K-Brick with highest compressive strength and good density compared to normal brick. Experimental results indicate that the using of kaolin as partial cement replacement can be successfully used to produce a better properties material. The results also indicate that density and water absorption of brick using kaolin are good and the strength characteristics are comparable to those of the conventional brick