SUITABILITY OF PARTIAL REPLACEMENT OF SAND WITH LATERITE FROM MALABAR REGIONS OF INDIA IN STRUCTURAL CONCRETE

Integration of new material as a partial fine aggregate replacement in concrete production would be able to reduce the high dependency of concrete manufacturer on river sand supply that may lead to ecological imbalance when this natural material is used excessively. This paper presents a study conducted to determine the suitability of partial replacement of sand with laterite available in Malabar regions of India in structural concrete. This study deals with Finite Element modeling of laterite concrete beam with the help of ANSYS. The load-deflection behavior of laterite beams under flexure is found to be bilinear. The deflection of laterite beam is more than deflection of ordinary beam but within the limit. In the present investigation, the results obtained from ANSYS and experimental results are almost equal for the laterite beam. The result shows the concrete with laterite up to 30 % replacement of fine aggregate is used for structural concrete and savings of 25% in cost of fine aggregate.