Preparation and characterization of ancient recipe of organic Lime Putty-Evaluation for its suitability in restoration of Padmanabhapuram Palace, India

Selection of an alternate cementitious mortar using ceramic tile dust waste: a hybrid MCDM approach

Selection of a suitable alternative material from a pool of alternatives with many conflicting criteria becomes a Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) problem. In the present study, ternary blended mortars were prepared using ceramic tile dust waste (CTD), fly ash (FA), and ground granulated blast furnace slag (GGBFS) as binder components. Crusher dust (CD) was used as a fine aggregate component. Binder to aggregate ratios of 1:3 and 1:1 were prepared considering suitable flow. A total of 16 mortar mixes were cast. These mortars were tested for various conflicting criteria compressive strength, flexural strength, porosity, water absorption, bulk density, thermal conductivity, specific heat, thermal diffusivity, and thermal effusivity whose weightages obtained were 29.09%, 20.08%, 12.77%, 10.60%, 8.74%, 6.74%, 5.54%, 4.47%, and 1.97%, respectively, as per AHP analysis. Later, considering these different criteria and alternate mortars, it was observed that a 1:1 mortar with 20% CTD, 30% FA, and 50% GGBFS (RC20F30G50) is found to be the suitable mortar with the highest relative closeness coefficient of 0.861 and the highest net outranking flow of 0.316 with respect to MCDM techniques: technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) and preference ranking organization method for enrichment of evaluations (PROMETHEE-II), respectively. The ranking of the mortar in both methods complies with the relative weightages of the criteria and the performance of the mortars with respect to the above criteria.

Properties of Air Lime Mortar with Bio-Additives

Lime mortar has been a primary binding material in ancient mortar, and is one of the main reasons behind solid and stable constructions that remain stable even after thousands of years. The benefits of lime are innumerable: it is minimally processed and used with a lesser carbon footprint and embodied energy and, most crucially, it is a carbon absorbent. This research experiments with the strength properties (compression) of lime at 28, 56, and 100 days of air curing. The investigation studies the durability using water absorption, UPV test, and carbonation parameters after 100 days of exposure to air. The tested materials are subjected to SEM analysis to find the morphology of the reaction that takes place and the products that are formed. We also performed a comparative study of two different fermented additives by the duration of fermentation (1 day and 10 days) and two different doses of additives (Jaggery and Kadukkai) with air lime. The bio-additives were experimented with using gas chromatography and mass spectroscopy for the formation of new enriching compounds, which improved the qualities of traditional lime mortar. The formation of fat and protein in the additives was found using IS 7219-1973 (a method for the determination of protein in foods and feeds). Using the AOAC method, the presence of fat confirms the improvement in strength and durability properties. The phytochemical analysis details the alkaloids, terpenoids, steroids, phenols, flavonoids, tannins, glycosides, and saponins. Quantification of phenols and flavonoids adds to the beneficial aspects of the fermented additives. The experimental results indicate that using naturally fermented organic materials in the lime has made the structures stronger with the stable build of calcite and vaterite components. The self-healing capacity of lime mortar makes it time resistant.