Experimental Investigation on Papercrete Bricks

the major constituent in any construction activity is cost of the materials. In developing countries, the untapped or unused resources are needed to be identified for its potential usage in the construction sectors. A huge quantity of non-renewable resources is consumed by the construction industry throughout the world. The one such resource is waste papers. Everyday tons of waste papers are discarded as landfill or dump sites than those recycled. It is found that around fifteen trees are required to make a ton of paper which means that 720 million trees are used once and then buried as landfills each year. In this research paper, an attempt is made to produce an alternative material using waste papers (newspapers) in order to find out their suitability to use as a building construction material by determining the compressive strength, weight and cost of bricks. This could help to eradicate a few environmental hazards caused by the construction industry. In this study, three different mix proportions were tried by utilizing the waste Paper and industrial by products like Fly ash and eggshells as cement replacement materials. The self-weight of bricks made by using paper pulp with cement and sand is approximately 50% lesser than the conventional bricks. By the use of papercrete bricks the dead weight of the structure is reduced to a considerable amount.