Design and Manufacturing of Soral Cement Base Sheets by Considering the Orientaion, Size and Shape of the Additives

Abstract

Nowadays most of the production of engineering materials are focus on eco-friendly concept due to environmental issues which are arise by traditional engineering materials. Sorel cement which was discovered by Stanislas Sorel in 1867 is used for many construction applications nowadays. Since this is an environmental friendly product it has a potential of replacing asbestoses and Portland cement. But due to some of its poor properties, applications of soral cement are more concentrated in to indoor usages. Magnesium Oxide and Magnesium Chloride are the main raw materials of this Sorel cement mixture. To use this Sorel cement mixture in outdoor construction applications, cured cement mixture should be used. Both ordinary Portland cement and Sorel cement has better compressive strength but weaker in tensile strength. Steel reinforcement are used to Portland cement in order to overcome that problem. But steel reinforcements cause corrosion in Sorel cement due to chloride iron which comes from Magnesium chloride. This research mainly focused on possibility of using natural fibers like Bamboo, Coir and Arica as a reinforcement material for Sorel cement with other possible additives to produced composite board (sheet). Water absorption, water permeability, density and flexural strength tests results show effects of those additives. Density value of asbestos reinforced samples is 1.6 gcm-3 and that value is almost same for all of the samples (with natural reinforcements). Sample with Arica fibers showed minimum value of 1.18 gcm-3 while minimum water absorption of 2.74% showed from coir fiber sample with fly ash additives. In contrast, asbestos based sample shows 19.37% of water absorption. Water permeability of all the test samples (both asbestos and natural reinforcement) showed smaller value and it can be considered as zero. Maximum flexural strength was reported by the coir fiber based sample and the average value is 4.89 MPa while asbestos based samples having 20.09 MPa. Further studies is going on to enhance the flexural strength of sheets.