Affordable Construction Materials and Techniques - A Case Study

G.Anantha Sai Sreelekha*,Rachel Savio Rozar*, Dr.K.Pandurangan**

* Undergraduate students, Department of Civil Engineering, Pondicherry
Engineering College
** Professor in Civil Engineering, Department of Civil Engineering,
Pondicherry Engineering College.

Abstract: With the number of slum residents increasing every year in the
range of 9% to 10% each year, there is an urgent need for the government of
India to find the cost effective solution to meet out the shortage of dwelling
units by developing new construction practices. In other side, there is a
scarcity of building materials, need to develop new materials to construct the
affordable housing. This paper presents a case study of the affordable housing
scheme adopted for providing dwelling units to slum people. The building is a
four storied monolithic concrete structure used cast in situ construction
technique. The structure has used self-compacting concrete with fly ash to
produce smooth finish of walls and slabs with good strength and durability.
This construction technique proves to be cost effective in giving affordable
housing to slum people in a short period of time.

Introduction: India has a severe shortage of the dwelling units. In the urban
sector alone, with an estimated slum population of about 65 million and
another 0.9 million homeless people in India. Over 90% of the housing demand
is from low-income group of the population. The slum prevalent in many
Indian cities is a direct evidence of the shortage. In other side the Government
of India has come out plan for the Housing for All / Pradhan Mantri Awas
Yojana (PMAY-HFA), which aims to provide a home to all urban poor by 2022,
is an important urban policy thrust. Hence the Building Research
Organisations in India has a big role to develop new materials and
construction practices to meet out the shortage of dwelling units in a short
period of time and with an affordable price to all slum dwellers. For this rapid
construction practice is one of the option, which will reduce the labour
dependency as well as improving the quality of construction. In the
construction industry, the fast construction process is done by precast
prefabricated and monolithic cast in-situ construction techniques. For
improving the quality of construction and that to cost-effective use of
alternate construction materials such as flyash is most viable one to produce
durable concrete for construction. The maximum utilisation of flyash as filler
material in production of self-compacting concrete shows excellent in the
fresh and hardened states.

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This paper highlights the advantage of using self-compacting concrete using
flyash for making monolithic concrete construction of slum dwelling units.
Building plan of the slum dwelling unit, Self-compacting concrete mix
proportion and construction technique are presented.

Building Description: Each slum dwelling unit consists of Ground + three

floors with Monolithic concrete construction. The Structure consists of Four
No. of Tenement Units at each Floor level. Each Tenement unit consists of One
Hall (Room No.1- Size 262cm x 300cm), One Bed Room (Room No.2-Size
262cm x 250cm), One kitchen room (size 175cm x 175cm), and W/C and Bath
room (size 175cm x 175cm) are provided. A cantilever balcony (214cm x
100cm) is also provided for each unit of the tenement block. The total plinth
area is 24.32sq.m (including balcony area) and the each floor area is
22.39sq.m (including balcony area). The size of each tenement block is 10.37m
x 11.50m. The total no. of units in each block is 16. The height of each storey
is 3m i.e. from floor level to floor level. The height of parapet is provided is 1m
above the terrace floor level. The stair case provided in each block is extended
up to third floor level only. The approach to the terrace floor was given by iron
ladder for periodical maintenance. The Plan of the building is shown in Fig. 1.
The cross section of the wall is shown in Fig. 2.

Fig.1: Typical plan of the apartment Fig. 2: cross sectional

view of the wall

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The building is designed for dead and live loads and continuous strip footings
are adopted for the entire structure. The details of the foundation are shown
in Fig.2. The thickness of the walls in the superstructure is 120mm. However
the wall thickness is increased to 200 mm below plinth level. The concrete wall
in the present structure is laterally supported by the floor slabs, at various
levels. A minimum reinforcement is provided in both vertical and horizontal
directions of the wall i.e. 8mm@165mmc/c is provided both horizontally and
vertically. Slab thickness of 120mm is provided with 8mm@200mmc/c and
300mmc/c both in short and long span direction. At the junction of wall and
the slab, the reinforcement of the slab is taken in to the wall to provide
connectivity between the elements. Also an additional “L” shaped rod of 8mm
dia. is provided at the junction to increase the rigidity. At the “T”- junctions of
the wall an additional 8mm dia. rod at a spacing of 200mm centers is provided
to increase the rigidity of the joint. The floor slab and roof slab are designed
for a live load of 1.5 kN/m2 , with floor finishes adopted for both slabs is
0.75kN/m2. The footing slab width provided is 850mm with a thickness of
300mm. The reinforcement in the footing slab is 12mm@200mmc/c as main
reinforcement and 8mm@200mmc/c as distributary steel. The strip footing
layout is shown in Fig.3.

Fig.3: Footing Layout

Monolithic Construction: Monolithic concrete construction is one in which
walls and slabs are constructed as one and in these systems traditional
column and beam construction is eliminated giving the structure a complete
box like (cubicle) shape. Rapid construction of multiple units of a repetitive
type can be achieved with a sort of assembly line production by deployment

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of a few semi-skilled labors. The entire operation essentially comprises fitting
and erecting the portion of shuttering as already determined (the
optimization in use is determined by appropriate planning) and then carrying
out concreting of the walls and slabs. It is estimated that the above operation
for one tenement block (i.e.G + 3) is 30 days approximately. Props are so
designed that they stay in position while de-shuttering of slabs and/or takes
place. Since the form work for both wall and slab components is erected at
one time, placing concrete with a suitable slumps, produced by adding
superplasticizer and compaction by vibration using high frequency pokers
may create a problem of honey combing at discrete locations of the wall and
slab components. Honey combing was observed when the plinth wall of
height 2.8m was concreted with the conventional mix having a slump
between 100mm to 150mm with a needle vibration as shown in Fig.4.

Fig.4. Honey combing formation on plinth wall due to conventional concrete

Moreover the height of the wall is 3 m and the concerting of the wall and the
slab is done in a single day with a layer of reinforcement and hence normal
vibrated concrete may result in honeycombs and hence there is need for self-
compacting concrete in this project. The mix proportioning of SCC as per the
literature and the present SCC mix used in this project is follows.

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Self-compacting Concrete for the Monolithic Construction: Self
compacting concrete which can be poured from a height of 3 m without any
segregation has been designed. SCC was proportioned to provide a nominal
28 days compressive strength of 20 MPa. The method proposed by Su et al.,
has been followed to proportion the mixture. The SCC mixture consists of the
following proportion of materials per cubic meter of concrete. Cement = 350
kg, Fly ash = 150 kg, coarse aggregate = 769 kg (20mm = 469 kg; 10mm =
300kg), river sand = 955 kg, water = 195 lts (W-c ratio = 0.55; W-b ratio =
0.39), Super plasticizer = 9.00 liters. The mixing of the materials is carried out
using a pan mixer of 1 cum in the laboratory. Mini mobile batching plant with
a drum mixer of capacity of 10 m3 / hour is used in the site. The properties of
fresh SCC were tested and the results are in Table.1. The slump spread
obtained in the site is shown in Fig.5. The mean cube compressive strength of
the SCC is 34.4 MPa and 29.8 MPa for lab and site samples respectively which
is satisfying the M20 grade target strength as per IS:10262-2009 i.e.26.6 MPa.

Table 1. Properties of Self Compacting Concrete

Sl.No. Particulars of the test Results Acceptance Criteria
obtained
Max Min
1. ‘V’ funnel, sec 9 9 6
2. ‘L’ Box, ratio 0.8 0.8 0.8
3. Slump flow time, sec 2.9 2.9 2
4. Slump spread 620 660 650
diameter, mm

Fig.5: Slump flow test of SCC

Monolithic Structure: The structure constructed with SCC which is
progressive and finished is shown in Fig. 6 &7. Iron flats inserted inside the

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formwork is at a spacing of 600mm to hold the formwork. These flats are
removed after concreting and this leaves a hole of 15 mm depth and 5 mm
thick in the walls as shown in Fig.8.These holes are filled with a rich mortar
of 1:3mix proportion before painting the building. The self-compacting
property of the concrete is found to be satisfactory with respect to the strength,
finishing durability and rapid construction.

Iron flats

Fig.8: Iron Flats used in the Formwork

Fig.6: Construction in Progress Fig.7: Finished Monolithic Structure

Conclusion: This paper demonstrates the use of this special concrete in one
of the major housing project which uses monolithic concrete construction of a
G+3 multi-storey building. From the experience of the usage of SCC in this
project the following conclusions are evident.
 Monolithic construction technique reduces the construction time
considerably. It took 45 days to construct a block with G+3 stories.
 The surface of the concrete was very smooth and even smoother than
the plastered wall and strong.
 The construction can be executed by unskilled labour.
 The formwork panels can be reused many times. Hence, this type of
construction is cost effective.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors wish to thank Puducherry Slum Clearance Board and M/s
Sintex Industries Ltd., for helping the authors in collecting the data. The
authors would like to thank the Prof. P.Dananjayan, Principal, Prof.G.Gerald
Moses, HOD of Civil Engineering, and Professor K.Pandurangan, Department
of Civil Engineering, Pondicherry Engineering College, for their continuous
support and encouragement.

References:
[1] Babu GK , Dinakar P, Self-Compacting Concrete with Fly Ash Master
Builder (7) (2006) 52-56.
[2] Rajamane NP,Annie Peter J, ‘Self Compacting mix proportioning and
chemical admixtures’, Master Builder, (7) (2006) 35-43.
[3] Project Report no.SD/20/PSCB/2008, ‘Report for Monolithic Concrete
Construction of Multistoreyed Tenement Blocks at Reddiyarpalaym for
Puducherry Slum Clearance Board, Puducherry.
[4] IS: 10262-2009, ‘Recommended Guidelines for Concrete Mix Design’,
Bureau of Indian standards, New Delhi.
[5] Affordable mass housing with Sintex: monolithic concrete construction,
revolutionary plastic formwork system, http://www.sintex-plastics.com

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Materials Used for Construction

Construction Techniques:

This paper aims to Highlight the advantages of using Self Compacting

Concrete (SCC) for Monolithic Concrete Construction, presently adopted for
the construction of tenement blocks of Puducherry Slum Clearance Board,
Puducherry. The paper highlights the structural details, construction aspects
and strength evaluation of wall and slab panels of the structure. The cast-in-
situ construction technique uses PVC forms having aluminum frames, which
can resist a concrete pressure safely for a depth of 3m. It shows that the
adopted cast in situ technique using self compacting concrete (SCC) can
produce smooth finish of walls and slabs with adequate strength and
durability. With the use of SCC and considering the repetitive usage of PVC
forms and the speed of construction with semi-skilled labourers, cast-in-situ
construction technique proves to be an economical solution for the mass
housing projects.

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