EFFECT OF FLY ASH AND TEMPERATURE ON PROPERTIES OF BURNT CLAY BRICKS

In the quest for economy, quality and sustainable development ; it is imperative to find suitable alternative to existing materials and methods of brick manufacturing. With this in mind, some experiments were carried out in laboratory to reduce consumption of soil in bricks by adding fly ash and to investigate the effect of fly ash on properties of bricks. Different proportions of fly ash and different baking temperatures were tried to investigate their effects on compressive strength and water absorption quality of bricks by casting and testing about 1000 bricks in laboratory. The test results show that the compressive strength of bricks can be improved by 4 to 5 times for certain proportion of fly ash and certain baking temperature. The property of water absorption of bricks can also be improved. This advocates the use offly ash as a supplementary material to soil by reducing consumption of soil in brick manufacturing towards the efforts of maintaining ecological balance through sustainable development of natural resources. Further, consumption of fly ash will reduce the problem of its disposal to some extent.