The Use of Marble Dust, Bagasse Ash, and Paddy Straw to Improve the Water Absorption and Linear Shrinkage of Unfired Soil Block for Structure Applications

Abstract

Unfired admixed soil blocks are made up of soil plus stabilizers such as binders, fibers, or a combination of both. Soil is abundant on Earth, and it has been used to provide shelter to millions of people. The manufacturing and usage of cement and cement blocks raise several environmental and economic challenges. Due to disposal issues, agricultural and industrial waste is currently the biggest hazard to the environment and humanity in the world. Consequently, environmental degradation brought on by agricultural waste harms the ecology. As a result, researchers are attempting to develop an alternative to cement blocks, and various tests on unfired admixed soil blocks have been done. This investigation uses agricultural waste (i.e., paddy straw fiber and sugarcane bagasse ash) and industrial waste (i.e., marble dust) in manufacturing unfired admixed soil blocks. Under this investigation, the applicability of unfired soil blocks admixed with marble dust, paddy straw fiber, and bagasse ash was studied. The marble dust level ranged from 25% to 35%, bagasse ash content ranged from 7.5% to 12.5%, and the content of paddy straw fiber ranged from 0.8% to 1.2% by soil dry weight. Various tests were conducted on the 81 mix designs of the prepared unfired admixed soil blocks to find out the physical properties of the block followed by modeling and optimization. The findings demonstrate that the suggested method is a superior alternative to burned bricks for improving the physical properties of admixed soil blocks without firing.