Utilization of waste marble dust as cement and sand replacement in concrete

In this paper, CaCO₃ waste marble dust (WMD) has been utilized in the production of concrete. Raw materials (Cement, Sand, WMD and Crush) were collected from Peshawar, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. Concrete cubes were molded in the laboratory and investigated by XRD. Effect of WMD addition to the concrete was studied. It was reported that 10% addition of WMD as cement replacement showed enhanced performance of the compressive strength as compared to sand replaced WMD blended concrete. Increment in WMD contents beyond 10% resulted in significant decrement of compressive strength. Substituting WMD with cement resulted in a decrement of 29.76%, while with sand, the decrement was 6.09%. Concrete made with cement replaced WMD showed the lowest water absorption rate over 7 days curing as compared to sand replaced (intermediate water absorption) and clean concrete (highest water absorption) samples.