Utilization of Polystyrene Waste for Wall Panel to Produce Green Construction Materials

The wall structure separating floor areas significantly contribute the weight of the building that put it into a greater risk to earthquake event. The use of lighter wall materials is more desirable to reduce the potential risk of damage due to earthquake treat. This development of polystyrene wall panel is an effort to achieve two objectives, namely development light wall material and promoting green construction materials by utilizing polystyrene waste. The paper present the study on the development of polystyrene waste wall panel by pre-compacted method. In this research, the shredded polystyrene was blended with cement Portland and water at various certain proportion. When the mixed already properly blended, it was poured into the steel mold of 30x80 cm. The mixed within the mold was subjected to compaction stress for up to 2 MPa that reduce the thickness of the mixed into about 1 cm. The polystyrene panel was kept in the humid zone for curing for about 28 days. They were 12 wall panel specimens made for this purpose. Result of test show that at the same compaction stress, higher cement content produces stronger polystyrene concrete. The average compressive strength of specimens with 250 kg/m3 and 300 kg/m3 cement content are 4.9 MPa and 5.3 MPa, respectively, and for flexural strength are 2.4 MPa and 3.3 MPa, respectively. The result show that the compressive strength of concrete matrix and flexural strength panel are significantly high. However, under repeated loading of about 10% of maximum load, the panels experience decrease in stiffness in each load cycles suggesting the low tensile capacity of the concrete matrix. These results indicate the potential use of polystyrene wall panel for construction materials purposes with further attention on improvement the tensile characteristic of the concrete matrix.