The study of early strength development of foamed concrete / Nurul Izza Hussin

Foamed concrete is the latest technology in construction industries in Malaysia.
Normal concrete used cement, aggregate, sand and water as materials in order to
produce concrete. As for the foamed concrete, it uses same materials except replace
aggregate with foaming agent which consists of synthetics and protein based.
Foamed concrete has low density which is approximately 400 kg/m3 – 1800 kg/m3.
Although the weight is small, it is a highly workable, self-leveling, self-compacting
and good thermal insulation. It gives benefit to the construction industries as an
alternative method for replacing aggregate in concrete in order to prevent from using
aggregates continuously that may decrease the volume of natural aggregates besides
producing better quality of the concrete. The objectives of this project is to determine
the early strength for foamed concrete of density 1200 kg/m3 – 1400 kg/m3 and to
conduct the study on the effect to the early strength of foamed concrete added with
admixtures which is Glenium C380 and Calcium Nitrate. The scope of this project is
to focus on compressive strength at early age of concrete and the effect of
admixtures. There are 5 different types of cement-sand ratio; 1:1, 1:2, 1:3, 2:1 and
3:1 with density between 1200 kg/m3 – 1400 kg/m3. All work was carried out at
heavy laboratory by using cube mould 100 x 100 x 100 mm. All data for the
compressive strength were recorded at age 1, 7 and 28 days. Based on the results, the
strength of foamed concrete with 3:1 mix proportion is the highest compressive
strength meanwhile 1:3 mix proportions is the lowest one. Whilst, foamed concrete
added with admixtures (Glenium C380 and Calcium Nitrate) give highest values for
the compressive strength compared to the normal foamed concrete. However, among
these admixtures, Glenium C380 gives highest values compared to the Calcium
Nitrate.