Innovative concrete block solutions for reconstruction

Recycling materials have a significant value in the industry in various aspects. Administrations have been making use of the recycling materials economically and environmentally. By reusing construction waste materials like recycled concrete aggregates, the negative environmental impact of the waste materials can be reduced. The usage of the recycled construction materials can be cost and time effective in various type of construction applications. In recent years, interlocking blocks have been commonly spread in different countries to be an alternative method to conventional blocks for traditional and sustainable buildings, especially in post war/disaster countries. Like the traditional blocks, interlocking blocks can be produced by concrete. The usage of the recycled concrete aggregates in the manufacturing of the interlocking concrete blocks reduces the construction cost and the size of debris. In this thesis, an experimental study conducted to innovate a new design of interlocking concrete block containing recycled aggregates by reducing the consumed time and cost in construction together with an environmental approach. According to this, the designed interlocking concrete blocks were produced manually by using recycled aggregate and wallettes were easily built with a mortarless mechanism by stacking the blocks without any mortar layers. In the experiments, beside the individual compression tests of the two types of interlocking concrete blocks with natural and recycled aggregates, wallette samples produced by interlocking blocks containing either 100 % natural aggregates or 100 % recycled aggregates were tested under the axial compressive loading. The experimental results were assessed by considering the compressive strength, displacement, and failure mode. According to the obtained experimental results, it was noticed that the average compressive strengths of the wallettes produced with natural or recycled aggregate interlocking concrete blocks were large enough to meet the standards in the Syrian regulations, which is considered as an example reference. The resulting displacement values were acceptable and could be negligible in some wallette specimens. At the end of the study, it was concluded that the innovated interlocking concrete blocks with both normal or recycled aggregate could be a good alternative to traditional blocks, especially in post disaster or post war areas.