Utilization of fly ash amended sewage sludge as brick for sustainable building material with special emphasis on dimensional effect

Abstract Sewage sludge (SS) management has been regarded as a serious environmental and health issue around the globe, especially in developing countries like India, mainly due to the lack of proper regulatory criteria, and appropriate engineering infrastructures. The present research work demonstrates the utilization of Fly Ash (FA) in varying percentages (with an interval of 10%) with SS as brick for sustainable building material with special emphasis on dimensional Effect. The impact of dimensional effect is measured using compressive strength behaviour for a stress rate of 14 MPa/min of two different sizes of brick i.e. D1 and D2 of sizes 7 × 7x7 cm3 and 2 × 2x2 cm3, respectively. Owing to the sintering effect, the maximum strengths of 4.02 MPa and 7.6 MPa are noticed for a composition of 60% SS+40% FA for D1 and 40% SS + 60% FA for D2, respectively. According to the Indian Standards (IS) 13757: 1993, an exhibited strength of more than 3.5 MPa by any brick composition enables it to be used as a common building brick. In general, due to the formation of triangular wedges, the D2 bricks exhibited better strength for any mixing ratio of FA and SS. The added benefit in our study was lower thermal conductivity (0.48 Wm−1K−1) of the prepared fired brick implying its better insulation property. Our study uniquely highlights the possible utilization of FA for stabilizing SS for sustainable substitution of natural clay fired brick. Future study may further investigate the compositional effect of FA on the thermal and thermodynamic attributes of the bricks.