Study on Natural Sand to Quarry Dust as Partial Replacement of Cement

India has currently undertaken a major initiative on development of infrastructures such as express highways, industrial structures, commercial structures, in order to meet the requirement of globalization in its vision 2020. Concrete plays the key role towards this development and a large quantum of concrete is being utilized in every construction practice. River sand, which is one of the major constituents used in the production of concrete, has become very expensive and also becoming scarce due to the depletion of river sand beds. Quarry dust has very recently gained good attention to be used as an effective filler material instead of sand. The use of quarry dust as a fine aggregate decreases the cost of concrete production in terms of the complete replacement and even partial replacement of natural river sand. The environmental impact of river sand mining on river beds, the expensive and rising cost of manufactured sand, the cheap and good accessibility of quarry dust, are the main motivations behind the undertaking of such a project. This research will report the experimental study which investigates the proportions by weight of quarry dust to acquire similar concrete strength with 100% river sand replacement. The focus of this research is applicable to M20 and M25 nominal mix concrete only.