Engineering Performance of Cement Mortar Cubes Containing Percentage of Date Palm Fibers and Leaf Ash

The problem of conventional cement mortar cubes is the requirement of cement to be used for their production. It is recognized that cement production involves a significant release of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, which is detrimental to the quality of the environment. To adopt a sustainable development of building materials, date palm tree has been used by numerous researchers to partially replace the cement in the production of mortar cubes. The study aims: 1. To optimize the engineering properties of cement mortar cubes enhanced with date palm fibers and leaves ash. 2. To investigate the microstructures and chemical characteristics of the optimized cement mortar enhanced with waste date palm fibers and leaves ash. The design optimization in this study, mortar cubes were formulated in such a way that the trial mix designs were varied with date palm leaves ash (1% to 10% date palm leaves ash as partial substitute of cement) and date palm, fibers (1% to 5% as partial substitute of silica sand). The mechanism of reaction at early- and long characterization tests studied term period of curing on paste, including water absorption test, Ultrasonic Pulse Velocity (UPV) test, compression test, SEM test, energy dispersive X-ray (EDX) test, X-ray and Fluorescence tests (XRF). As the study's major finding, it was realized that the optimal mix ratio of the treated mortar cubes was noticed to have 4% date palm leaves ash as partial cement substitute and 2% date palm fibers as partial silica sand substitute. There was significant improvement in the treated mortar cubes' engineering properties compared to those of the control mortar cubes. The study outcomes proved that both date palm leaves ash and fibers can cause pozzolanic activity and reinforcing effect on the treated mortar cubes.