The Effect Of Adding Water Hyatonic Fiber (Eichornia Crassipes) To Paving Block K-90

Abstract

Paving block is one of the pavement layers that are often used as an alternative, including in Indonesia. Today, many consumers prefer paving block compared to other pavements such as concrete or asphalt. However, to fulfill those needs, the improvement needs to be done to improve the quality, in terms of strength and age using the paving block itself. Therefore, the use of water hyacinth fiber as a composite material is a good step for experiment to improve the properties of paving block by adding water hyacinth fiber to the sand and cement mixture. With this experiment, the test object that will be made is a test object with a 1:5 mixture with FAS 0.54 by compaction using manual/conventional method. The test object is made as many as 3 pieces from the normal test without additives, then followed by paving block with the same ingredients added by water hyacinth fiber from 1%-5% of the cement weight used. The result of each test object that has been tested is the compressive strength score from the normal test object to the test object with a fiber content of 5%. The average result of the calculation of compressive strength in sequence from the test objects are: normal, 1%, 2%, 3%, 4% and 5%, namely 93.6 kg/cm2, 81.6 kg/cm2, 78 kg/cm2, 65.6 kg/cm2, 51.2 kg/cm2, and 52.3 kg/cm2. Therefore, it can be concluded that the addition of water hyacinth fiber cannot improve the quality of paving block because the more fiber mixture added, the more decrease the compressive strength score.