Top 9 superb Building materials used in Construction Projects

Tweet

Dreaming to have a dream house of your own? or if you are a budding architect or a civil engineering student, this article will be helpful to you as it carries out information’s about the building material used to create the structure of a building. In today’s world various building materials are used to provide strong, durable and pocket friendly construction.
We all know that house or our homes always reflect and represent the living standards of our society. So to create that amazing house these are the most important materials used.

Concrete

Concrete is the most commonly used building materials. Basically concrete is made by mixing Portland cement, admixtures, water aggregate’s. Concrete is an adaptable component, that can be blended with different special components and formed to any shape. The aim of mixing, is to blend all the components to form a solid mass and to coat the aggregates with paste of cement.

Advantages of Concrete

The advantages of Concrete is described below :

• Concrete is fire Resistant as well as Energy Resistant.
• Concrete has the ability to cast and has compressive strength
• Concrete is inexpensive and mouldable into various shapes
• Concrete is durable in any environment.
• Concrete has a sound insulating character
• Concrete can be recycled for use, as sub base materials in parking lots and building roads.

Cement

Cement is the fundamental element used for binding and hardening other substances. With the help of hydration process water and cement are hardened together. This hardening process is also known as curing.Cement when used with fine aggregate and water produces mortar which is used in masonry construction .When it is mixed with gravel, sand, water and admixtures it forms concrete.
Cement is like dry powders and should not be confused with Mortars. Infrastructure is one of the main characteristics of a growing developed country, where cement plays a pivot element for the development of that country.
The types of cement classified here as.

• Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC)
• Portland Pozzolana Cement (PPC)
• Rapid Hardening Cement
• Quick Setting Cement
• GGBS Cement
• Low Heat Cement

In the table given below we are going to state the advantages and disadvantages of cement.

Advantages of Cement	Disadvantages of Cement
Cement has great resistance quality to cracking and shrinkage	It cannot be used in large scale as it has a higher heat radiation
There is a strong bond between steel bars and concrete which can be transformed into reinforced concrete structures	Cement has a low tensile strength and should not be used as tension number
Cement has a high compressive strength	Cement consists of too much of weight and volume which results to great inconvenience in Construction.
The configuration of cement is more flexible and can meet any civil engineering requirement	Cement has a complicated production process.

Aggregate

The most mined product in this world are aggregate.Aggregates are used in a variety of ways in civil construction. In railway ballast and road construction the aggregates are used to resist the overall load.to distribute the load properly to the supporting ground and to drain the water off the surface.
The usage of aggregates can be classified into three varieties

• It serves as a filling material
• It enhances the construction project as an infiltrating material.
• It is a super load building material.

The advantages of Aggregates are specified below:

• When we blend aggregates with concretes , it makes the mix more compact
• It Helps in lowering the consumption of concrete water.
• It lowers the production cost.
• It enhances the strength of the building material.

Coarse Aggregates

Coarse Aggregates are nothing but irregular shape broken stones. Gravel materials which are large to be retained on 4.7mm sieve size are called coarse aggregates. Coarse aggregates are generally produced by manually breaking them by hands, or by blasting the stone quarries or by crushers.
Machine made crushers makes the stones of the aggregates in various sizes whereas hand broken stones consist of only single size stones.

Admixtures

Admixtures are manufactured chemicals or additives added during concrete mixing to intensify the characteristics of concrete. These admixtures reduce cost of construction, modify properties of hardened concrete and it also establish the quality of concrete during transporting/placing ,curing and overcome certain emergencies during concrete operation.

Mineral Admixtures

Mineral admixtures are also defined as Supplementary Cement Materials. This kind of Mixtures helps to increase in strength, reduction in water demand and low heat of hydration. It enhances durability and helps in correcting deficiencies in aggregate gradation. There are other advantages of Mineral admixtures helps in energy savings and it is pocket friendly too. Fly ash ,ground granulated blast furnace slag and silica fume are the most commonly used admixtures. They play different roles in concrete mix and enrich the characteristics of concrete.

Chemical Admixtures

Chemical Admixtures can be defined as chemical addictives which are added to concrete mixtures that enhances the properties of concrete in the fresh or hardened state. The main components are Portland cement , water and aggregate. It comprises of paint and protective coatings for steel .
The classification of chemical admixtures are specified below:

• Air Entrainers
• Water Reducers
• Set Controllers
• Speciality admixtures
• Super plasticizers

Mortar

Mortar can be defined as a bonding agent, which is generally consist of water,sand,fine aggregate and is well blended with Lime and cement. The various functionalities of mortar are mentioned below:

• It is used for filling up spaces between stones and brick for producing light walls.
• It is used for moulding and ornamental purpose.
• It helps in creating a soft bed between different layers of brick or stone masonry for equal distribution of pressure over the bed.
• It is used in plastering process mainly to hide the joins
• It helps in improving the appearance of the construction.

Steel

Steel is one of the most versatile elements used in Construction Projects. Due to its compressive strength and tensile ability civil Engineers find it very useful to use it construction projects. Steel consists of Iron carbon and other elements.
The usage of steel in construction projects is specified below:

• It posses durability
• Steel is very much environment friendly and sustainable.
• Steel can be moulded into various designs and forms. It gives better edge and shape and that is the reason it is used in weapons
• Steel is most recycled material and because of its unique magnetic properties makes it an easy material to recover from stream to be recycled.
• Steel Helps in reducing carbon dioxide.

Types of Steel

Steel can be classified into four types

• Light Gauge Steel
• Structural Steel
• Mild steel
• Rebar Steel

Bricks

Bricks are one of the oldest materials used in construction. The history of Bricks goes back to thousand years where many old architectural monuments are made of bricks. In construction engineering bricks is chosen because of its durability.
Unlike other materials bricks are very user friendly and have a low maintenance. Bricks are basically multifunctional product and can be used in various ways

• Bricks is a non combustible material
• It absorbs heat
• It has resistant against high pressure and frost
• It is reusable and recyclable. The main ingredients of bricks are clay, sand,water,air and fire. While making brick no toxic elements are used, so there is no way of soil pollution.

Stone

Stone has been used as a building material since prehistoric times. Since it is available in nature it is used as main component of many heritage building. Stones that are used for making structures are know as building stones. The pyramids of Giza, burial chambers in the UK, The Taj Mahal in India, temples in Malta were all build of stone over more than 5000 years ago and are still proudly flaunting its architectural beauty. However during the last century the use of stone has been decreased, but still it remains an aristocrat of Construction materials.

Final Thoughts

Thus we have seen a wide variety of Building materials used in Construction. So there is no “Silver Bullet” when it comes for choosing materials for building that specific architectural structure. It depends upon the civil engineer and the architect to choose the material and initiate the project.