The Effect of Water Cement Ratio on Cement Brick Containing High Density Polyethylene (HDPE) as Sand Replacement

¹ Repair, Strengthening and Rehabilitation of Structure Focus Group, Jamilus Research Centre, Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia, 86400 Parit Raja, Batu Pahat, Johor, Malaysia
² Abd Manas Bin Abd Wahab, No. 3A, MARA Building, Iskandar Street, 33100 Pengkalan Hulu, Perak, Malaysia

^* Corresponding author: wirda@uthm.edu.my

Abstract

Waste disposal can contribute to the problem of environmental pollution. Most of the waste material is plastic based, because the nature of difficult of plastic degradable by itself. In order to overcome the problem, many study has been conducted on the reuse of plastic material into various field such as civil engineering and construction. In this study, municipal solid waste (MSW) in the form of High Density Polyethylene (HDPE) plastic was used to replace sand in cement sand brick production. The HDPE used in this study was obtained from a recycle factory at Nilai, Negeri Sembilan. 3% of HDPE replacement was applied in this study, with the cement-sand mix design of 1:6 and water-cement ratio 0.35, 0.40, 0.45 and 0.50 respectively. All specimens were tested for compressive strength and water absorption at 7 and 28 days. The density of the bricks was also recorded. The finding show that brick with 3% HDPE content and 0.45 of water-cement ratio at 28 days of age curing show the highest compressive strength, which is 19.5N/mm² compared to the control specimen of 14.4 N/mm².