The construction industry relies heavily on concrete as a building material. The coarse aggregate makes up a substantial portion of the volume of concrete. However, the continued exploitation of granite rock for coarse aggregate results in an increase in the future generations’ demand for natural resources. In this investigation, coconut shell was used in the place of conventional aggregate to produce coconut shell lightweight concrete. Class F fly ash was used as a partial substitute for cement to reduce the high cement content of lightweight concrete. The impact of steel fiber addition on the compressive strength and flexural features of sustainable concrete was investigated. A 10% weight replacement of class F fly ash was used in the place of cement. Steel fiber was added at 0.25, 0.5, 0.75, and 1.0% of the concrete volume. The results revealed that the addition of steel fibers enhanced the compressive strength by up to 39%. The addition of steel fiber to reinforced coconut shell concrete beams increased the ultimate moment capacity by 5–14%. Flexural toughness was increased by up to 45%. The span/deflection ratio of all fiber-reinforced coconut shell concrete beams met the IS456 and BS 8110 requirements. Branson’s and the finite element models developed in this study agreed well with the experimental results. As a result, coconut shell concrete with steel fiber could be considered as a viable and environmentally-friendly construction material.

The land use and land cover change dynamics is in par with the increasing growth of urban developments and associated sprawl. The objective of the study is to quantify such land cover changes caused due to the urban expansion along the outer ring road using Remote Sensing and GIS. The land cover maps are created for four segments namely Chikkarayapuram, Nazarathpettai, Meppur, and Perungalathur for the years of 2009, 2012, and 2016, respectively. The land cover maps are analyzed for changes among seven classes, namely agriculture, barren land, residential units, industry, water body, other vegetation, and marshland (swamp). Further, the land cover maps of the four segments are analyzed for changes in terms of spatiotemporal aspects (area-based land cover change), environmental aspects (green cover change), and economical factors. The urban growth of the Chikkarayapuram, Nazarathpettai, Meppur, and Perungalathur segment along the outer ring road corridor in the years 2009, 2012, and 2016 are (5.16%, 20.10%, 7.14%, and 12.63%), (14.31%, 30.62%, 13.9%, and 22.18%), and (19.67%, 33.1%, 23.22%, and 40.27%), respectively. The urban areas have increased from 2009 to 2016 by 20, 76,530 sq. m. The agriculture regions have been reduced from 2009 to 2016 by 12, 62,700 sq. m. Besides, using the MOLUSCE plugin in open-source GIS (QGIS), simulated maps for the year 2022 were created based on the land cover maps of the three years (2009, 2012, and 2016) which are then validated with the ground-truth points obtained from Google Earth. The scope of the study utilization of Google Earth Engine (GEE) and automated feature extraction algorithms for predictive analysis.

The current study aimed to analyse the viability of incorporating the post cryogenic discarded rubber and the air-cooled slag as an aggregate in partial replacement of stone dust in fly ash bricks production. A range of mechanical, non-destructive, and microstructural tests was performed on bricks thus produced by incorporating rubber and slag aggregates in various dosages (i.e., 5, 10, 15, 20 and 25% by stone dust weight). The result revealed that the compressive strength dropped from 71 to 43 % in the case of rubber aggregate replacement. Morphology study confirms that the rubber aggregates resulted in the porous microstructure of the bricks and leads to lesser unit weight and lighter structure. The rubber may be used as a lightweight aggregate in the brick possibly as it reduces the density of the final product. However, the use of rubber in bricks needs to be cautiously designed to get hold of productive solutions at the end. The findings demonstrate that the copper slag substitution of up to 15%, found to be enhanced the strength properties and it will be a better choice for low-cost construction as a promising alternative construction material.