A STUDY ON STRENGTH PROPERTIES OF TEXTILE SLUDGE WITH FIBRE REINFORCED IN PAVER BLOCKS

The recent trend in waste management is to reuse the industrial waste into usable product. In Tamil Nadu, the textile sludge is generated at a large rate annually from the common effluent treatment plant (CETP). This textile sludge is currently used in land filling. However due to limited availability of landfill sites raised the need of an alternative disposals. Also the textile sludge leads to problems of ground water pollution, extreme change in soil condition and poor productivity of soil. A renewed interest of converting the textile sludge into construction materials has been prompted to achieve a visible disposal option in saving the depleting natural resources.In this study, an attempt has been made to utilize the textile sludge as cement replacement material in making the paver blocks. The effects of addition of polypropylene fibre in the sludge based paver blocks were also investigated. Paver blocks were cast with sludge as cement replacement material at zero, 10, 20, 30 and 40 percent for the grade M50. Polypropylene fibres were added at 0.25, 0.5, 0.75 and 1 percent by the volume fraction. Tests on the compressive strength at 7 days and 28 days were conducted on the paver blocks. Based on the test results it is concluded that the substitution of textile CETP sludge for cement, up to 30% may be possible for the manufacturing of paver blocks. The addition of fibre up to 0.5 % enhanced the compressive strength.