Self-compacting mortar with sugarcane bagasse ash: development of a sustainable alternative for Brazilian civil construction

Abstract

The technically controlled use of industrial residues in replacement of natural resources for the production of new products with comparable quality presents a great economic and sustainable contribution. In this sense, this work sought to develop self-compacting mortars with partial replacement of sand by sugarcane bagasse ash (SCBA) by a rheological study of the optimum dosage of superplasticizer to cement ratio. The self-compacting parameters were obtained by analyzing the relative flow area and relative flow time, adapting from mortar flow tests. Besides one sample composed only of sand as fine aggregate, the self-compacting mortars presented replacement rates of sand by sugarcane bagasse ash, in mass of 5, 10, 20, 25, 30 and 40%. The results demonstrated that it was possible to reduce up to 489 and 56 kg of sand and cement, respectively, to produce 1 m3 of self-compacting mortar with sugarcane bagasse ash considering the expressive replacement rate of 40% of sand by SCBA.