ESSAY RCA

MECHANICAL BEHAVIOUR AND DURABILITY

PERFORMANCE OF CONCRETE CONTAINING RECYCLED

CONCRETE AGGREGATE’S ESSAY

INTRODUCTION

The main idea of this essay is to create conscious about the use of concrete.

Now days the concrete represents one of the most useful and crucial material of construction and it’s made of sand, gravel, water and cement. This is because; it has the necessary strength and other physical properties that ensure the stability of structures. Also, concrete is the largest quantity of man-made material produced in the world. That means it exist a lot of this material.

Studies say that world-wide 2-3 billion tons of construction and demolition waste are produced every year. The reason for this is that, all over the world the constructions have reached the end of their design life so they have to be demolished otherwise, it can be risky for people. Because it can fall down and someone can be inside or around and it can be dangerous. Also some of the designs or the structures have no function so demolished them is the only option people use.

Other reason is natural disasters, such as earth quakes, tsunamis, cyclones, etc, cause structures to collapse.

Well, there are many reasons to explain the waste of concrete, but that’s not the point.

The point is how we can stop wasting or better words, recycling, cause for those who don’t know making concrete is very prejudicial for the environment. Why? Because, the industry that manages the materials for the man-made, destroys mountains so they could have the rock they need, also that special rock they need.

In many countries is been told they used RCA (RECYCLED CONCRETE AGGREGATE) which I may say, Is really great, this means RCA are aggregates derived from the processing of materials previously used in a product or construction, most of RCA are used for pavements. This is having been replacing the NA (natural aggregates), which are a mixture of rocks and minerals.

It’s needed to say that, RCA is not useful for large-scale non-structural applications. In order to do that we must mixed it up with NA, of course, in proportion.

However, I must mention some of the reasons of recycling concrete:

1. We stop using NA so we can save them for new generation

2. RCA is lighter, so it reduce cost

3. RCA offers a way to reduce landfill waste streams.

Just imagine, all the money you can saved from RCA, not just that all the time, and energy. Yes, I said energy, cause in order to create new materials it’s necessary extracting new aggregate

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