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Abstract

This paper reports result of performance evaluation on self-compacting coconut shell concrete (SCCSC) developed using discarded coconut shells as coarse aggregate and partial replacement of ordinary Portland cement with fly ash (FA) at 15% and 20% replacement levels. Tests carried-out on the fresh concrete such as slump flow, T500, V-funnel, L-box and wet sieve segregation resistance confirmed the flowability, consistency and cohesiveness of the developed mixes. On the hardened concrete, mechanical properties tests such as density, elastic modulus, compressive, splitting tensile and flexural strengths were conducted. Furthermore, durability properties of the concrete were evaluated using water absorption, sorptivity, volume of permeable voids and rapid chloride penetration tests. Tests result showed that SCCSC1 mix with 15% FA gave an optimum compressive strength of 21.2 N/mm2at 28 days and 25.1 N/mm2at 90 days, while SCCSC2 with 20% FA developed compressive strength of 20.1 N/mm2 at 28 days and 25.5 N/mm2 at 90 days. Flexural strength, splitting tensile strength and elastic modulus for are 4.50 N/mm2, 2.56 N/mm2, 8490 N/mm2 and 4.00 N/mm2, 2.52 N/mm2, 7480 N/mm2 for SCCSC1 and SCCSC2 respectively. Furthermore, tests on durability properties of the developed mixes gave satisfactory results comparable to that of other lightweight concretes.