Experimental Investigation on Lightweight Expanded Clay Aggregate (LECA) as a Coarse Aggregate in Concrete

Significant utilization of natural aggregates leads to the depletion of the naturally available resources and the degradation of the ecosystem. Hence, the construction industry needs advanced smart materials and an alternative approach to infrastructure development and it leads to the nation’s overall economic growth. Lightweight concrete (LWC) is special type of concrete with the advantage of reducing the self-weight of the building. In this LWC production, coarse aggregate is substitute with the lightweight expanded clay aggregate (LECA). When compared with natural coarse aggregate (NA), LECA is lightweight, porous material which helps in reduced density, internal curing, acoustic, and thermal insulation. In this experimental study, different replacement level of LECA such as 10, 20, 30, 40, and 50% is used to find the effects of mechanical and its microstructural characteristics of LWC. The experimental results indicate that 20% replacement of LECA has good comparable strength. Microstructure analysis like SEM, EDX, XRD, and FTIR was examined and studied about the surface structure of the replaced concrete.