STUDY ON THE REPLACEMENT OF CEMENT AND FINE AGGREGATE WITH QUARRY DUST

Quarry dust is the crusher waste of granite quarries which is about 13-15 % of the total quarry products and accumulation of this waste generates environmental issues. For the past three decades, the scarcity of river sand has been taken seriously and research initiated to replace it with quarry dust either in the available form, or fines removed or processed sand. The presence of very fine particles found as 5-8% demands for increased water cement ratio for better workability which could reduce the strength of the concrete. Therefore it is emphasized, to replace cement partially with these fines of quarry dust to produce cost effective concrete. This studyis planned to make concrete totally replacing river sand with the quarry dust considering the fine fraction of quarry dust present for partial replacement of cement.Concrete of M30 grade has been designed by usingfines removed coarser quarry dust as fine aggregate. The cement is replaced with fines of quarry in 0, 2, 4, 6, 8 and 10% by weight. Seven different concrete mixes are prepared, tested and compared in terms of workability and strength with the conventional sand concrete of same grade. It is observed that the optimum replacement level of cement with fines of quarry dust is 6%