Lightweight foamed concrete for houses in Jordan

Abstract

Sufficient thermal insulation is fundamental to construct energy-efficient structures. As Jordan has little natural resources and applying insulation based on codes of thermal insulation are not put in force yet, the current practice for thermal insulation is investigated. A review of the progress change of modern architecture and construction in Jordan is presented. Then, a review of the structural use of foamed concrete is presented based on previous research and current research project and the applicability of the suggested foamed concrete in structural members is verified. In this paper, Artificial Neural Network is trained, tested, and to bridge the quantities of the components in mixture and the mechanical properties based on the current experimental program. The validation statistical evaluation measures (ASEvalidation=0.001586, MAREvalidation=25.586, and R2validation=0.97672) denote that ANN results and experimental outcomes are in well agreement. Lastly, three exterior walls are constructed based on conventional method used in Jordan using normal-weight concrete in one wall and two different foamed concrete mixtures in the others. The walls are tested for thermal insulation. Results shows that the U-values of walls with foamed concrete, namely; FC I and FC II walls are 36% and 47% lower than that of the wall casted with conventional concrete, respectively. This is expected to significantly save the annual energy by constructed external walls using these materials, which in turn would presents an attractive cost savings for clients.

Keywords

• Foamed concrete
• Sustainability, thermal insulation
• Structural behavior
• Exterior wall construction
• Artificial neural network