EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION ON EFFECT OF REPLACEMENT OF CEMENT WITH SILICA FUME AND STYROFOAM BALLS ON MORTAR CUBES

The study is conduct to find out the effect of Styrofoam balls and silica fume on various properties of mortar cubes such as compressive strength and density. The tests for compressive strength and density were conducted for 7 days, 14 days and 28 days. The mortar mixture is prepared by replacing Portland cement with Styrofoam balls in the ratio of 0%, 0.5% and 1% by weight of cement and silica fume is varied at 10%, 15% and 20% by weight of cement. The combine effect of Styrofoam balls and silica fume is also studied on mortar cubes. Styrofoam balls are the material of low density which effects the strength properties of mortar cubes, to counterbalance this, silica fume is added, which is very fine material which increases the strength of the mortar cubes. Due to the Styrofoam balls, the density decreases upto 25-45% (at an average) as compared to normal mix mortar cubes. From the tests, the compressive strength comes out to be maximum at 15% replacement of cement with silica fume.