Time-dependent behavior of eco-friendly sand concrete using treated wood shavings

Abstract

Given a circular economy, wood waste has become an important secondary raw material. For this purpose, an experimental study was conducted to characterize concrete mixes containing wood shavings for structural and nonstructural construction applications. In this study, treated wood shavings (TWS) from woodworking waste were used by replacing natural sand for making sand concrete (SC) with different mixing ratio (0%, 10%, 20%, 30%, 40%, and 50%) by volume of sand. The behavior of sand concrete samples containing wood was then explored. Wood shavings treatment, X-ray diffraction (XRD), resistance, porosity, thermal conductivity, fire resistance, and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) were used to investigate the behavior of SC using TWS (SCWS). The results showed that most of the SCWS samples had acceptable mechanical strength and density. Increasing the amount of (TWS) decreased the density, compressive strengths, and thermal conductivity of the mixtures by up to 38%, 35%, and 35% respectively. However, all the mixtures could be considered structural LWC mixtures as they developed acceptable strength in terms of structural design and use. Additionally, the novel composite reportedly possesses adequate thermal conductivity and fire resistance.

Finally, sand concrete based on wood shavings could be used as a fire insulator when combined with other relevant fire-resistant materials