Assessing the Mechanical Performance of Ternary Blended Cement Concrete Incorporating Periwinkle Shell and Bamboo Leaf Ashes

The study investigates the mechanical properties of concrete incorporating Periwinkle Shell Ash (PSA) and Bamboo Leaf Ash (BLA) as cementitious binders. Concrete cube (100mm) prepared from a standardized prescribed mix of 1:2:4, batch by volume was taken as the reference mix. The cement component in the reference mix was replaced with combined % weight of periwinkle shell ash (10-30%) and bamboo leaf ash (10% fixed) given five blended mixes. Water-cement ratio of 0.60 was adopted for the reference and blended mixes. A total of 144 cube specimens were evaluated for compressive and tensile splitting strength at four curing ages up to 56 days. The results indicated that the compressive strength generally increases with curing age, and that the mix containing 80% cement-10%PSA-10%BLA, outperformed that of the reference mix at 28 and 56 days. The tensile splitting strength increase with curing age and decreases as the % weight of PSA increases from 15% to 30%. A higher tensile splitting strength value was attained with mix 2 than the reference mix at 14, 28 and 56 days. The regression equation for the strengths relationship was obtained as FSP = 0.141 (Fcu) 0.873. The study concluded that mix 2 proportion is adequate for the production of ordinary structural mix concrete. Keywords: periwinkle shell ash, bamboo leaf ash, blended cement concrete, compressive strength, tensile Splitting strengt