Suitability of Soil Washed Sand as Fine Aggregates to Replace River Sand in the Concrete

This paper presents a study on suitability of replacing river sand with soil washed sand as fine aggregate in concrete. The study was based on a comparison of concrete performance produced from river sand and soil washed sand obtained from four locations in Sri Lanka; Homagama, Rathnapura, Anuradhapura and Bandarawela. Several standard tests including Sieve analysis, Slump test and Compressive strength were conducted in order to check the workability, particle size distribution and compressive strength of M25 grade concrete. From the test results, it was found that percentages of coarse sand, medium sand and fine sand present in soil washed sand are higher than that of river sand, while highly coarse sand percentage was higher for the soil samples extracted from Rathnapura and Bandarawela areas compared to river sand. Slump test results showed that the concrete produced from river sand has a lower slump value compared to that of concrete produced from soil washed sand, suggesting that washed soil sand could possess higher workability. Test results showed that specimen cubes have achieved the target strength of M25 grade concrete even though compressive strength of concrete produced from soil washed sand was about 10% lesser compared that of river sand at 7 days, 14 days and 28 days’ strength