A study of quality of different kinds of bricks and other building materials available in Bangladesh using neutron radiography technique and design of a small scale neutron radiography facility

Abstract

Manufacturing building materials has become very good option of business in the developing countries like Bangladesh. Quality control of these materials and environmental friendly structure assurance should be confirmed on approaching such industrial establishments. Among the non-destructive testing (NDT) techniques Neutron Radiography (NR) is the most common procedure to study internal structure, homogeneity, any inclusion or voids or cracks etc. The water penetration behaviour and structure can be identified more effectively through this NDT technique. Present study has been carried out to differentiate two types of brick manufacturing processes named Hoffman Kiln method and conventional local method. Thermal neutron radiography facility of 3 MW TRIGA Mark-II research reactor of Atomic Energy Research Establishment (AERE), Savar, Dhaka has been utilized in this research work. Densitometric measurements of the neutron radiographic images of the samples have been adopted in this work. The samples were collected from different places in Bangladesh depending on their manufacturing process including fuel to burn, burning process etc. At first the appropriate irradiation time was determined for the samples and then neutron radiographs were taken after drowning the samples up to 1 inch into water for 5 min, 10 min, 15 min and 20 min consecutively. The radiographic images under all these conditions for individual samples have been investigated and it can be concluded with the statement that bricks made of Hoffman Kiln method are more homogeneous inside, absorbs lower amount of water and most importantly products of this environmentally friendly system can construct better, safer and long lasting building structure for livelihood. In addition, the quality of some jute-plastic products and some special types of concretes used inside some buildings has also been studied. Finally a small neutron radiography facility has been designed which may be useful to study different types of building materials.