Experimental Study on Sawdust Reusing as Material of Light Weight Brick-wall to Reduce Building Mass Due to the Earthquake Risk, Case Study Papua

Abstract

Papua is a territory of Indonesia in which strong earthquake [2,3]. One of the solutions to reduce the seismic risk is reduce the building mass. Wall is the building parts contributed the greatest mass in a building. Papua region in general use brick-wall of local product (LLB) made of limestone-cement as wall material, sized of 27x19x9 cm and 8 to 9 kg of weight. Indonesian Building code of Load, 1983, required mass of a wall without holes is 200 kg/m2[4]. Local brick-wall predicted exceeded the code regulation, and will cause the building in a big of mass that the leads to the big seismic shear force. other side, Papua still has a large forest with the volume and quality of woods, produced any size of woods and byproducts that waste in the form of sawdust [1, 9]. The waste is simply dumped and pilled or sometimes burned. So far there has been no use of the sawdust. As environmental issues, it should be done the innovation for use of sawdust in a form of epoxy-sawdust brick (ESB) to be an extremely valuable economic and reduce the environmental issue [6]. Weight per unit area wall of the ESB-W is 102 kg /m2 or 51% respectively compare to the weight of wall required by Indonesian Building Code of Loading, 200 kg /m2 [4]. Other two specimen test, LB-W is 116 kg /m2 of weight or 58% and LLB-W is 220 kg/m2 or 110% respectively. LLB-W already exceeded the code but ESB-W is the lightest weight could reduce the building mass and impact to the horizontal seismic shear forces.