Issue34

S. Ahmad et alii, Frattura ed Integrità Strutturale, 34 (2015) 524-533; DOI: 10.3221/IGF-ESIS.34.58 528 Figure 2 : FESEM micrographs of pyrolyzed coconut shells particles. Figure 3 : EDX analysis of pyrolyzed and ground coconut shells particles. The chemical composition of micro inert pyrolyzed coconut shells particles was determined by means of the EDX analysis. The analysis results indicates the very high content of carbon about 87.29 wt.% and low amount of oxygen about 12.26 wt.% with few traces of potassium about 0.45 wt.% are present in the pyrolyzed coconut shell particles (see Fig. 3). The laser particles size analysis revealed that the grinded pyrolyzed particles possess a uniform distribution of the particles sizes ranging from 4.8 µm to sub-micro meter sizes. This observation was also confirmed with the FESEM observation of the pyrolyzed particles. Raman analysis of the pyrolyzed and ground coconut shell particles indicated two distinct peaks at 1346 cm -1 and 1595 cm -1 which corresponds to the defect peak (D) or disorder peak and the graphitic peak (G), respectively. A small peak was also observed at 3078 cm -1 that is due to the higher vibrational mode of the defect peak (2D) (see Fig. 4). The peak intensity ratio (I D /I G ), which is the measure of the material’s quality was evaluated as 0.8471 indicating that very low degree of structural defects are present in the pyrolyzed coconut shell particles [34,35]. Figure 4 : Raman spectroscopy of pyrolyzed coconut shell particles. Mechanical testing of the cement composites were carried out to investigate the effect of the inclusion of pyrolyzed coconut shells particles in the cement composites. For each cement composite mix minimum of three notched prism