State of the art of concrete paving blocks in Sri Lanka (CPBs)

Abstract

It is in the last five years that the stakeholders of concrete paving blocks (CPBs) are awakening to engineer the CPBs in Sri Lanka. Although large scale production of CPBs has already flourished in Sri Lanka, their adherence with stringent standards (both Sri Lankan and International) remains dubious. This reluctance to meet the performance and durability criteria according to codes of practices, curtails the life span of concrete block paved roads to a greater extent. The scope of the present paper is limited to verifying whether the local concrete paving blocks are made on par with international standards. Sample blocks were obtained from local CPB manufacturers and investigated.Though these blocks met the criteria in Sri Lankan Standard for CPBs for strength classes 2, 3, 4 roads, none of them met the compressive strength criteria for strength class 1 roads. Besides, tensile strength requirement specified in the BS EN 1338: 2003 was met by none of the blocks tested. Since, Sri Lankan Standard is planned to incorporate splitting tensile strength as the dominant measure to assess paving blocks in the near future, this study also attempted to identify a mix proportion to meet the splitting tensile strength requirement specified in BS EN 1338: 2003. When CPBs were casted using CPB making machine, an intolerable strength deviation was observed. A series of tests were conducted to explore the reasons for this.The outcome of which would help the small scale manufacturers to keep strength variations within a tolerable range, when they are using CPB making machines.