Experimental Production of Sustainable Lightweight Foamed Concrete

Lightweight foamed concrete is recently acceptable for use in low strength capacity for building and civil construction purposes as a result of its peculiar features such as low thermal conductivity, low self weight and self compacting features hence its high workability. But it major demerits is its difficulty of high strength development when compared with normal concrete. The maximum strength achieved so far is less than 25MPa even at higher density of between 1500kg/m3 and 1800kg/m3. Strength development of foamed concrete depends largely on some factors which are the constituents of the base mix, the density of foam and the water cement ratio of the base mix. This paper studies the base mix parameters to produce a sustainable foamed concrete by substituting cement which is a source of carbon dioxide, a green house emission elements, with a cementitious material, fly ash within a range of 10% up to 50% and water cement ratio of 3.0 was used. Notraite PA-1 was used as foam agent and prefoamed method was adopted for the production of the foamed concrete. With a target density of 1600kg/m3, the compressive strength result of 10.5MPa reveals that a high strength sustainable foamed concrete structural panel could only be produced with 10% replacement of cement.