Studying the Mechanical Properties of Mortar Containing Different Waste Materials as a Partial Replacement for Aggregate

The fast growth in the construction sector has made the concrete one of the most essential materials in the world. Concrete industry consumes massive amounts of raw materials, such as fine and coarse aggregate. Nowadays the increasing amount of waste construction materials causes environmental problems. Certainly, the sustainable solution is to adopt these waste materials and reuse them again in order to save natural resources and decrease their consumption. This study aims to investigate the potential use of different waste materials such as ceramic, clay bricks, marble, glass, granite, porcelain, and concrete wastes as a partial replacement of fine aggregate in cement mortar. Each one of these materials has been used in two proportions, 10% and 20% as replacement of natural sand weight. The compressive and flexure strength tests at 28 and 56 days have been taken into account for hardening mortar. Results have showed that it is possible to produce sustainable mortar containing 20% of porcelain, glass or clay bricks waste as a replacement for natural sand with a significant improvement in compressive and flexure strength properties. In contrast, it has been found out that waste marble had a negative impact on the hardened properties of mortar especially at the later age (56 days).