The benefits of using structural lightweight concrete in construction industry, particularly in high rise buildings, over normal weight concrete are numerous. The main method of producing structural lightweight concrete is the use of lightweight aggregates instead of ordinary aggregates in concrete. Due to the limited resources for natural and artificial lightweight aggregates, the alternative sources for lightweight aggregates should be discovered from industrial wastes. Oil palm shell (OPS) and oil-palm-boiler clinker (OPBC) are two solid wastes from palm oil industry and are available in abundance in tropical regimes. The use of just OPS as coarse lightweight aggregate in concrete mixture has some drawbacks for concrete. The aim of this study was to investigate engineering properties of a lightweight concrete containing both of these aggregates. For this purpose, in this study, 50% (by volume) of OPS was replaced with OPBC in an OPS lightweight concrete. The test results showed that when OPS was substituted with OPBC, significant improvement was observed in the compressive, splitting tensile and flexural strengths. In addition, initial and final water absorption as well as drying shrinkage strain of blended coarse lightweight aggregate concrete were significantly less than OPS concrete.
Some basic requirements are set for small clear specimen data to incorporate Malaysian timbers into equivalent European timber strength classes. In general, the correlation between structural and small clear specimen test results must be established for every timber group regardless of origin. This paper introduces a sort-plot technique for analysing the correlation of some mechanical properties of timber in selecting appropriate parametric model. Bending test was conducted on mixed species hardwoods for the determination of strength and stiffness values of both structural and small size specimens. The results showed that the sort-plot diagrams demonstrate an obvious linearity pattern between timber properties despite having poor regression values. The technique verified that properties of timber in structural and small size specimens correlated linearly.