Abstract:
Nowadays construction of infrastructure is growing rapidly becoming a serious problem in this
world, particularly in the developing countries due to high material consumption. So, there are
high demands in the construction industry using the river sand as fine aggregate in the
production of concrete. This has created scarcity of river sand (fine aggregate). To minimize
this scarcity alternative material used as river sand for the production of concrete; such as
industrial by-product is mandatory. Pond ash is an industrial waste product from the thermal
power plant, such material can be used as a partial replacement of fine aggregate in C-25
grade of concrete which can reduce depletion of natural river sand (fine aggregate) as well as
minimizing the negative impact on the environment which released from industrial waste
disposal as land fill. The objective of this study was to investigate the effect of pond ash as a
partial replacement of fine aggregates on concrete properties.
In this study, the pond ash sample was collected from Ayka Addis textile factory. To achieve the
objective of this study, the experimental laboratory such as gradation, specific gravity, unit
weight, moisture content, silt content, and water absorption, workability, density, and
compressive strength tests were conducted in the laboratory of Jimma institute of technology.
In this research work, the workability of each mix was measured before the concrete cast and
the slum was 25 to 50mm. Also, the concrete cubes of size (150mm x150mm x 150mm) were
prepared with seven different sampling containing from 5% to 30% pond ash by the variation of
5% along with the control concrete mix for fine aggregate by weight for tested the harden
concrete such as density and compressive strength at 7, 14 and 28 days of curing respectively.
From the result obtained, the workability and density of concrete containing pond ash decrease
with increase percentage content of pond ash in the mix. On the other hand, the compressive
strength of pond ash concrete containing 5% and 10% have shown improvement compared to
the control concrete by about 0.13%,3.74%,2.46% and 0.04%, 1.14%,0.70% respectively at 7,
14 and 28 days of curing. In addition to this, the pond ash concrete containing 15% , 20%, 25%
and 30% the compressive strength have shown reduction compared to the control concrete by
about4.20%,4.33%,3.04%,7.16%,9.47%,7.53%,13.04%,14.43%,13.68%and17.33%,17.80%,19.
15% respectively at 7, 14 and 28 days.
Finally, in this study the percentage replacement of fine aggregate concrete up to 10% by pond
ash was better result in compressive strength of concrete was found to be 34.75N/mm2 at 28
days. Therefore, the optimum replaced fine aggregate by pond ash is 10%.