The Effect of Addition Water Hyacinth Fiber on the Mixture of Sand and Cement for Making the Paving Block

Abstract

Paving block is one of the most used pavement materials in many places, including in Indonesia. Currently, many consumers prefer paving block compared to other pavements such as concrete and asphalt. However, to fulfill all those needs, it needs to improve the quality either in the form of power or age from the paving block itself. Therefore, the use of water hyacinth fiber as an additive is a good step for the experiment to improve the paving block characteristics by adding water hyacinth fibers into sand and cement mixture. With this experiment, the test object that will be made is a test object with a 1: 6 mixture with FAS 0.54 with compaction using a manual or conventional method. The making of test objects is as much as 3 pieces of normal objects without using any other material, it will be continued by paving block with the same additive material, added water hyacinth fiber from 1% - 5% of the original cement weight. Results of each test object tested from normal material and with 5% water hyacinth fiber additive are as follow: the compressive strength average results of age 7 were correlated to 28 consecutive days from test object of N, 1%, 2%, 3%, 4% and 5% were 6.46 MPa, 5.69 MPa, 6.15 MPa, 4.46 MPa, 4.46 MPa , 4.15 Mpa.