INSPECTION OF PROPERTIES OF EXPANDED POLYSTYRENE (EPS), COMPRESSIVE BEHAVIOUR, BOND AND ANALYTICAL EXAMINATION OF INSULATED CONCRETE FORM (ICF) BLOCKS USING DIFFERENT DENSITIES OF EPS

Insulated Concrete Form (ICF) is an emerging construction technology using the interlocking of Expanded Polystyrene (EPS) sheet with poured in place concrete. Expanded Polystyrene has many advantages like lighter in weight, good thermal insulation, moisture resistant, durable, acoustic absorption, low thermal conductivity, etc., In this study, the properties of EPS were determined by the standard procedure as per IS 4671:1984, compression behavior of ICF and bondage between EPS and concrete were analyzed using ICF specimens casted using M25 grade concrete. Two types of ICF specimens were casted with corrugated EPS and Plain EPS and using different densities of 4,8,12 kg/m3 and varying thickness of 50 mm and 100 mm EPS. The results show that the compressive strength of ICF blocks casted with plain EPS was higher than the samples casted with corrugated EPS as well as results show that good bondage exist between EPS and concrete for plain and corrugated EPS without adding any bonding agent while casting and when compared to plain concrete all the ICF blocks exhibit tremendous ductile nature of failure