Effect of Using Horse Dung Ash (HDA) as partial replacement for cement in Cement paste and Mortar

Abstract

This paper investigates and presents an experimental study on performance of cement paste and mortar containing Horse Dung Ash as partial replacement of ordinary Portland cement. The chemical oxides of the HDA were determined using the X-ray fluorescence (XRF) spectrometry. Cement was replaced partially with horse dung ash up to 30% at 5% intervals. Consistency, setting times and soundness tests were carried out on the fresh cement-HDA blended paste. The mortar mixed ratio used in this research is of 1:3 mix designs with a water-cement ratio of 0.5. The mortar prisms measuring 160mm×40mm×40mm were cured in water for 7, 14, 21 and 28 days. Flexural strength test was carried out on hardened prismatic mortar specimens. Compressive strength test was carried out on the hardened mortar by using the auxiliary steel plates of cross section 40mm×40mm of thickness 10mm. Consistency and setting times of cement-HDA paste were found to increase with increase in HDA content. Both flexural and compressive strength were found to decrease with increase in HDA content and increase with curing age.