Sandstone as a Replacement of Brick Masonary

Abstract

Construction industry being one of the biggest contributors in economic development of a country. One of the basic building materials used worldwide is burnt clay brick. Due to abundance of raw material and certain physical and chemical characteristics, it serves its purpose quiet efficiently. As we know there is always a room for enhancement. The manufacturing process of burnt clay bricks has a huge impact on environment as it causes air pollution and wastage of land and energy resources. In 1990, fly ash bricks were introduced as an alternative for brunt clay bricks. The textures of the fly ash bricks were very similar to that of clay bricks and shape, the absorption coefficient and thermal conductivity, size, weight, density, porosity, and compressive strength of Fly Ash bricks compare with normal clay bricks yielded good results. Seeking for further improvement, sandstone seems to possess certain qualities that makes it a potential alternative of burnt bricks as well as fly ash bricks. If we use sandstone as an alternative, we can cut off all that drain of energy consumption and destroyed land can also be reclaimed and can be used for other purposes like agriculture. Also, sandstone is a naturally occurring resource that means it is also environment friendly. This report represents the comparison between different material properties of sandstone fly ash and burnt clay bricks. Some of the properties that are compared include compressive strength, modulus of rupture, bulk density, water absorption, density, specific gravity,bond shear strength, weight, size and wrappage. An extensive experimental study and analysis was carried out on sandstone where these physical parameters were measured with accuracy and then they were compared with clay bricks and fly ash bricks to check its adequacy to be used as an alternative to them. The results appeared to be in favor of sandstone and showed its ability to perform well as a masonry unit.