Concrete

Concrete good in compressive stress but it was totally poor in tensile stress. Normally for floor slap we have to add in some steel bar for reinforce the concrete, that we call reinforce concrete. Column, foundation, beam are also steel bar when we cast the concrete. During casting the concrete, we put in the steel bar at the lower part of concrete to handle the tensile strength. Concrete act as a important material in construction, like different grade of concrete will depend on different type of building or environment requirement. Why concrete must add in aggregate? Because aggregate will easy to form the shape and increase the strength of the structure to able support high loads. When we put the concrete in to form work, we also need to using vibrator to vibrate the aggregate at the bottom to separate evenly and fill in all the bubble inside.   

Types of Brick

There are thousands of different types of bricks, but we can be broken down into a handful of basic types. Below is some example:

        i. Handmade Brick

•           Handmade bricks are also made in a mould that made by human hands.
•      The clay isn't pressed as hard into the mould by machine, so brick normally has distinctive creasing known as a 'smile'.
•      This brick is expensive due to it made by human hand and desirable for specialist project.

              

ii. Stock bricks

•           Shaped in a mould.
•           This way the shape is a little more irregular than wire cut.
•           Most of the process to produce stock brick is automated.
•           Slightly more expensive than the wire cut brick.

    iii. Wire Cut Brick

•           Produced in a large numbers.
•           Sliced into shape by a wire, in a similar way to cheese that use the cheese wire to cut.
•           Very cheap because the manufacturing process is highly automated.

        

    iv. Fletton

•           Made from specific clay that only found in the South east of Great Britain.
•           The brick is burns in the furnace so will found small amounts of coal in the clay.
•          Because of this, less fuel is needed and the cost less to produce it and the coal deposits leave characteristic marks on the finished brick.

     v. Engineering Bricks

•           The brick is tough, strong, and hard-wearing.
•           Excellent resistance to frost and water.
•           Functions for groundwork, sewer works and retaining walls.

The video below shows the brick making machine extruder clay bricks

Types of Construction Materials

Types of Construction Materials

• masonry
• concrete

Masonry

• Inherently fire-resistive
  
• Poor conductor of heat
• Openings can allow fire to spread
• With prolonged exposure to fire, masonry can collapse

Concrete

• Inherently fire-resistive
• resistance of heat
• strong in compression but weak in tension
• can be damaged through exposure to fire - Spalling  

 

Blocks

The video below shows the green earth cinder block.

GREEN EARTH CINDER BLOCK - RECYCLED NEW HOME ENERGY EFFICIENT  BUILDING

History of brick making

The first  is Mud brick, dried in the sun. It is possible that on the Nile, Euphrates, or Tigris rivers, the deposited mud broken and formed cakes that shaped into crude building units to build huts to prevent weather destroy. In the early city, in Mesopotamia (modern Iraq), the first true arch of sun-baked brick was made about 4000 bc. The arch itself has not survived, but a description of it includes the first known reference to mortars other than mud. Bricks used the bitumen slime to bind together.

Burned brick also already been produced by containing a fire with mud bricks. The example is that the ziggurat at Ur of early monumental brickwork perhaps built of sun-dried brick; the burned brick were replaced the steps after 2,500 years (about 1500 bc). 

The Great Wall of China ( picture 1.0 ) was built by both burned and sun-dried bricks. The examples in Rome were the rebuilding of the Pantheon  ( picture 1.0 )   with an unprecedented brick and concrete dome, 43 metres (142 feet) in diameter and height, and the Baths of Hadrian ( picture 1.2 ), where pillars of terra-cotta were used to support floors heated by roaring fires.

Great Wall of China ( picture 1.0 ) 

Pantheon ( picture 1.0 ) 

Baths of Hadrian ( picture 1.2 ) 

Enamelling, or glazing, of brick and tile was known to the Babylonians and Assyrians as early as 600 bc. The great mosques of Jerusalem (Dome of the Rock)( picture 1.3 ), Isfahan (in Iran)( picture 1.4 ), and Tehrān are excellent examples of glazed tile used as mosaics. Some of the blues that found in these glazes cannot be reproduced by using the present manufacturing processes.

great mosques of Jerusalem (Dome of the Rock)( picture 1.3 ) 

Isfahan (in Iran)( picture 1.4 ) 

Western Europe had exploited brick as a building and architectural unit more than any other area in the world. It was particularly important in combating the disastrous fires that chronically affected medieval cities. London changed from being a wooden city became city of brick, to protection against from fire after the Great Fire of 1666.

The earliest European settlers had taken the bricks and brick construction to the New World. The Coptic descendants of the ancient Egyptians on the upper Nile River called their technique of making mud brick tōbe. The Arabs transmitted the name to the Spaniards, brought the art of adobe brick making to the southern portion of North America whereas in the north, Dutch West India Company built the first brick building on Manhattan Island in 1633.

Modern brick production

Fundamentally, the process of brick making has not changed from the time when the first fired bricks were produced some thousands years ago. The various phases of manufacture are as follows: securing the clay, beneficiation, mixing and forming, drying, firing, and cooling.

The video below shows the art of laying brick.

What is concrete?

Concrete is not found in nature the way we would find aluminium, nickel or iron. Concrete is produced from combining water, a special cement and rock: PORTLAND CEMENT + WATER + ROCK = HARDENED CONCRETE + ENERGY(HEAT) Heat? Yes, and lots of it if your concrete structure is big. The heat, and temperature variations in general, can cause cracking problems.
A common mistake people make is to use the words cement and concrete interchangeably. It is important to remember that cement is one of the components of concrete and concrete is the structural material. The cement used in concrete is not used as a building material because it would be too exorbitant and not as strong as concrete. So when you see a parking garage, a driveway, a sidewalk or a road remember it is made of concrete, not cement. And, by the way, that funny looking truck is a concrete mixer, not a cement mixer!
Cement is a general name for a material that binds other materials together such as course aggregate, fine aggregate and more. Yes, some people named it as glue. There are many materials which we would classify as cements and they are usually identified with certain uses, and can produce different types of "concrete". The type of cement used to make the riding surface of some of our roads (blacktop!) is called asphalt cement. It is a petroleum bi-product, and it binds rock into the road material we call asphaltic concrete.
Portland cement is used for concrete construction in bridge and dam. This type of cement binds the rock (also called aggregate) together to form concrete. Portland cement is a mixture of processed limestone, shales, and clays which contain the following compounds: CaO (lime), Al2O3 (Alumina),SiO2 (silica) and iron oxides. The amount of these compound will affect properties of the concrete.
Hydration happen when adding water to the dry cement starts a chemical reaction. While the mixture of cement, water, and rock is fluid, it can be poured into molds (called formwork) of arbitrary shape. This is a valuable property of concrete which allows us to build dams with the many different shapes which you saw in the history of dams. The compound gradually hardens into the desired final shape. And also the strength of the concrete gradually increase as the time longer. The water/cement ratio (w/c) of the mixture has the most control over the final properties of the concrete. The water/cement ratio is the relative weight of the water to the cement in the mixture. Engineers are responsible in design the water/cement (w/c) ratio. Selection of a w/c ratio gives the engineer control over two opposing, yet desirable properties: strength and workability. A mixture with a high w/c will be more workable than a mixture with a low w/c: it will flow easier. However, the low the workability the mixture, the more strength the concrete is. The engineer have to decide what ratio will give the best result for the given situation. This is not an entirely free choice because the water/cement ratio needs to be about 0.25 to complete the hydration reaction. Typical values of w/c are 0.35-0.40 because they give a good amount of workability without lossing a lot of strength.  The other important component for strength is the aggregate, the rock that is being combined with the cement. Aggregate is what makes the difference between hardened cement and the structual material, concrete. Aggregate increases the strength of concrete and is an economical way because it takes up a large volume of the concrete and is much less expensive than an equivlant volume of cement. To make very strong concrete requires a low w/c  ratio and strong aggregate.
Typical Composition by Volume Cement 7-15% Water 14-21% Aggregate 60-80%

The video below shows how to pour a concrete slab.

Stones

Parameters considered in selection of a good construction stone

Stone is widely use in the construction. There are some considerations needed to be considered in the selection of a suitable construction stone which are related with the cost, hardness, durability and appearance. There some standards for the choosing of stones for construction to determine the properties of a stone. The norms are based upon the following parameters below.

1. Chemical composition of stone:
2. Strongness and hardness:
3. Durability:
4. Resistance to fire:
5. Bio-Deterioration:
6. Appearance:

1. Chemical composition of stones:

The chemical properties of a stone toward a chemical influence are one of an important criterion to determine the suitability of a stone for any construction material selection. Different stone has their different elements and compounds thus this also will give a different properties. Therefore, the stone must be tested and verified in order to determine the chemical properties and composition of a stone. For example, Magnesium mix in the limestone will change the structural arrangement of the limestone and made it to be stronger and the mixture is called Dolomite. The stones weathering resistant ability can be improve by mix it with silicates as cementing materials.

2. Strongness and hardness:

The strongness and hardness of a stone is related with its load bearing capability. The stronger the stone are usually heavier and more compact grained. The good stone have a density of above 2.7. There are some factor affecting strength, hardness and toughness of a stone:

Factors affecting strength, hardness and toughness

1. Hardness or softness of the components
2. Proportions of the hard and soft minerals
3. Size and shape of the minerals
4. Cohesion
5. Porosity
6. Density
7. Cementing material

a) Hardness or softness of the components:

The hardness or softness of a stone is associated with the component of stone. For instance, Stones containing Silicate, Sodium, and Potassium are poor and consider as a soft-stone. The stones containing Magnesium, Calcium, and Iron are good and consider as a hard-stone.

b) Proportion of hard and soft materials:

The proportion of hard and soft materials of a stone affect is strength and load bearing capability. The higher amount of hard material will result with a harder and a more weathering resistance stone.

c) Size and shape of the minerals is stones:

The stronger stone has a fine crystal and vice versa, this property example the pore of a stone is associated with the fineness of the stone. Crystalline solids are more superior then the non-crystalline solids because there are harder and compacter.

d) Cohesion:

This criterion is about the property of the strength or attraction of the atoms or particles to attract each other. In general, the fine grains have more cohesive power than the coarser grains. The hardness, strength, and toughness of a stone is increase with the force of attraction of the atoms or particles. In other words, a stone have the higher the cohesive force the greater the hardness, strength and toughness of the stone is. The property of compactness also depends extremely on cohesion.

e) Porosity:

Porosity is the percentage of the pores contained in a substance. The porosity affects the load bearing capability of a stone. That has been known that the Porosity can reduce the strength up to 30 – 40. It also influence the resistance of a stone to resist a concentrated (point) load.

f) Density:

The denser the stone the greater strength of the stone is. One can made a stone denser by compacted it so that it would also be non-porous and strong, hence the toughness also depends upon the density.

g) Cementing material:

The cementing material is one of the factors of the stone selection. For example, the Stones with silicates as cementing material will have a better weathering resistance than those with calcareous or ferruginous binding material.

3) Durability:

The building designer has to consider the long lasting properties of the stone material used. To make sure the stability of the building structural system is safe.

4) Resistance to heat:

The higher the heat resistance of a stone the lower the coefficient of expansion; this reduces the risk of thermal stress.

5) Bio-deterioration:

Some special of the microbes can grow on the surface and in small splits, this would cause peel off and affect the quality of the stone. Therefore, the stone use need to undergo treatments to prevent the problem.

6) Appearance:

The colour and pattern of the stones must also be considered with the used in a project. The selection of a good stone must have to consider whether a stone selected is match with the out looking design of the building.

Factors to be considered in stone construction

A builder need to consider some factor such as the properties of the stones, type of construction ,treatment or maintenance needed, cost , availability, rule and regulation and appearance.

1. One has to know about the properties of a stone used like the hardness, strength and understand the advantages, disadvantages and limitation of the material. To ensure the material used is match with the standard requirement.

2. Type of the construction at related with the building system such as roofing system, flooring, wall and so on. For example, the limestone has a good strength and weathering characteristics. Limestone is usually used in the production of cladding, flooring, ashlar and other forms of walling.

3. A treatment should be done to improve the quality or the building materials used. Maintenance should be performed frequently to ensure the well-functioning of the component. 

4. Cost and the availability of the material use. The builder need to think about the budget, and the availability of the material (is it easy to obtain, transportation and so on)

5. The rule and the regulation in the building construction. Such as thickness, density, porosity and the type of the stone use for certain construction work.

6. Chose the colour and pattern of the stone which is match and suit with the design of the building to have a nice outlook.

The video below shows the natural stone veneer grouting.

The video below shows the providence farm stonework.