EFFECT OF WATER CEMENT RATIO ON THE WORKABILITY AND STRENGTH OF LOW STRENGTH QUARRY DUST CONCRETE

The depletion in the sources of natural sand and the demand for reduction in cost of construction has led to an urgent need to identify a substitute for river sand. Quarry dust, which is a by-product from the granite crushing processes in quarrying activity, is available abundantly and economically. This paper presents the study of the effect of water cement ratio on the workability and strength of M15, M20 and M25 grade quarry dust concrete. The cement content used in M15, M20 and M25 grade concrete were fixed at 270kg/m3 , 290kg/m3 and 300kg/m3 respectively. The water cement ratio used for each grade of concrete were 0.65, 0.6, 0.55 and 0.5. The compressive strength, Split tensile strength and the fresh properties of quarry dust concrete were studied and compared with control concrete containing river sand as fine aggregates. Also the variation in the workability, compressive strength, split tensile strength of quarry dust concrete was studied. It was seen that quarry dust concrete required more water to achieve adequate workability when compared to normal concrete. The compressive strength and split tensile strength of all grades of quarry dust concrete tends to reduce by a certain percentage when water cement ratio was increased from 0.5 to 0.65 in steps of 0.05.