Performance of Recycled Aggregate Concrete Made with Waste Refractory Brick
Concrete containing recycled aggregates have different properties from concrete containing natural aggregates. This work investigates, firstly, the possibility of using recycled refractory bricks (RBA) as coarse aggregate for concrete, and secondly, finds the ideal replacement percentage of natural coarse aggregate (NCA) by RBA. For this, an experimental study was carried out to assess the physical and mechanical properties of concrete produced with the partial and total replacement of NCA by RBA. Two types of RBA from two different sources were used, RBA-1 obtained from the grinding of new refractory bricks and RBA-2 obtained from refractory bricks used in the furnace recovered from the cement plant. For each type of RBA, two concretes with water/cement (w/c) ratios of 0.59 and 0.38 were tested. These concretes were evaluated by density, water porosity, ultrasonic pulse velocity (UPV) and compressive strength, and compared to those obtained on conventional concretes. The results obtained show that concrete can be manufactured using RBA. Concrete containing 20% RBA shows good quality compared with conventional concrete.