The Effect of Curing and W/c ratio Differences on Mechanical Behaviour of Oil Palm Shell Concrete with Fiber Mask

Abstract

The use of oil palm shells aims to reduce the amount of waste and make concrete environmentally friendly, but it also has maximum flexural and compressive strength values. The proportion of oil palm shells used is 10%, the optimum value as a substitute for coarse aggregate. The test specimens used concrete blocks of dimension 10×10×50 cm and cylinders of diameter 75 mm and height 150 mm. This study has a variation value of the water–cement ratio (w/c ratio) of 0.37 and 0.48 and contains FM additives with a percentage of 0% and 0.2% and 0.25% superplasticizer. There are five concrete curing methods to find the most effective: soaking concrete with plain water, lime water, and salt water, placing it in a temperature room, and wrapping wet burlap sacks—28-day test samples tested for compressive strength and flexural strength of concrete. Based on the results, the highest flexural strength value is 2.45 MPa in the curing method of soaking with plain water in the concrete with a w/c ratio value of 0.37 and 0% FM. The highest compressive strength value was 31.32 MPa using the burlap sack curing method, w/c ratio value 0.37, and 0.20% fiber mask.