Innovative sustainable coconut husk mortar for ferrocement infrastructure solution

Coconut husk (CH) is the by-product of crushing raw coconut shells (CS). Utilization of CH as a sustainable replacing material for the river sand in the production of mortar for the purpose ferrocement application is tried in this study. This novel idea of using CH waste, not only produces the green mortar, but it also minimizes landfills' area of dumping CS waste. Ferrocement occupied by the mortar nearly 95% volume of ferrocement products. Mortar produced using CH in the place of river sand and its application in ferrocement is very limited. Therefore, this study aimed to produce mortar using CH as fine aggregate in the place of river sand and concentrated to develop the mortar compressive strength minimum of 35 N/mm(2) as per ACI standard and WRD handbook. Therefore, an experimental study was conducted through trial mixes to achieve the target strength of CH mortar, and for comparison purposes, conventional mortar was produced for the same target strength. Thirty-two trial mixes in total were produced. Since the main aim of this study is to produce CH used mortar for the target strength and hence achieved after many trials with different combinations of admixtures. To show this study is an innovative sustainable infrastructure solution and feasible to implement infield practice, samples of ferrocement panels were produced from the selected trail mixes.