Ductility performance of lightweight concrete element containing massive palm shell clinker

• Aggregate replacement up to 70.5% by agricultural waste materials.
• Ecofriendly and economic concrete for heavily loaded structure.
• Significantly higher modulus of resilience and toughness of PSC concrete than NWC.
• Higher Displacement and torsional ductility of PSC concrete element compared to NWC element.
• Torsional ductility always higher than displacement ductility of PSC concrete element.

Lightweight and high strength concrete are commonly needed for a variety of structural applications. Structure with lightweight concrete should assure adequate performance of member under heavy loading. In this study, experimental investigations have been conducted to study the displacement ductility and torsional ductility of lightweight concrete element containing high volume of waste materials. Crushed oil palm shell (OPS) is used as coarse aggregate in different mixes and palm oil clinker (POC) as fine aggregate for sand replacement. In this experiment using those waste materials palm shell clinker (PSC) concrete has been produced. Furthermore modulus of elasticity, modulus of resilience, modulus of toughness, stress–strain and torsional behavior of PSC concrete are obtained and compared with normal weight concrete (NWC) and POC lightweight concrete. The study reveals that PSC concrete, in contrast to various types of structural lightweight concrete (LWC) and NWC, is a ductile material in structural element. Though the modulus of elasticity of PSC concrete is 30% and 37% of NWC and POC lightweight concrete respectively, its modulus of resilience and modulus of toughness are significantly higher. The displacement ductility index of PSC concrete element is 2.8 times higher than NWC and POC lightweight concrete. In contrast the torsional ductility index of PSC lightweight concrete element is obtained 3.3 times higher than corresponding concretes. This study found that the torsional ductility of PSC concrete is higher than displacement ductility because of good interlocking properties yet for NWC, displacement ductility is higher than torsional ductility. Furthermore the modulus of toughness of PSC concrete is higher, more energy required to completely break this concrete containing high volume of waste materials. Thus PSC lightweight concrete may be more suitable than NWC and POC lightweight concrete in the earthquake-resistance of concrete structures subjected to compressive and torsional loading structure.