Influence of Site Curing on Bond Properties of Reinforced Lightweight Concrete

Abstract
An experimental investigation on structural lightweight concrete was conducted using oil
palm shell (OPS) as coarse aggregate, which is a type of solid waste discarded in large
quantities in palm oil mills. The compressive strength and the pull-out bond strength were
determined in this study for up to 28 days under three curing conditions. These include two
currently practiced site curing conditions and one laboratory full water curing. The full water
curing condition was considered as controlled curing. The obtained 28-day air-dry density,
compressive strength and pull-out strength were in the range of 1930-1995 kg/m3, 25-28 MPa
and 5.4-9.4 MPa respectively which satisfied the requirements for structural lightweight
concrete. The developed compressive strength and pull-out strength under both site curing
conditions were relatively lower than full water curing condition but still were higher than
minimum requirement as per standard.
Keywords: Oil Palm Shell (OPS), Lightweight concrete, Pull-out test, Bond strength, Site
curing