ABSTRACT
In the construction industry, river sand is used as an important building material and the overuse of this material has made it scarce and limited. So nowadays crushed sand obtained by the crushing of naturally occurring rock is being used. But the scarcity of river sand and rising cost of crushed sand has forced us to find new alternative materials. Also, in addition to the year round extraction, the environment is threatened from increased pollution. The aggregate industry is a dominating and unorganized industrial sector in India. During crushing of stone aggregate in quarries, waste is generated, which is known as stone dust or quarry dust, which is currently not being used for any other application, other than filling low lying area and sub- soil stabilization. Use of quarry dust for producing foamed concrete blocks spurs up an effective way for the disposal of this waste material along with the preservation of natural resource. This investigation is aimed at upcycling this waste, i.e. replacing fine aggregate by a waste material, Quarry Dust (QD), in the range of 10–50% in steps of 10% to produce quality economic foamed concrete blocks which are light in weight and having sufficient compressive strength. The results indicate that the addition of QD increases the compressive strength and foamed concrete building blocks of compressive strength greater than 5 N/mm2 with a density lower than 1800 Kg/m3 can be made by using QD. Also, it is possible to produce blocks having very low density and compressive strength between 3–5 N/mm2, which can be used for non-load bearing structures.
