Plastic and stubble are some of the industrial and agricultural wastes whose disposal has become a menace over the last decade. Their extreme production has impacted their disposal which in turn is deteriorating the environment. This study presents four different brick development methodologies utilizing plastic and stubble wastes in building bricks. First brick was developed using the application of stubble having a 1:5 cement to sand ratio. The second had the application of PET bottle with 1:3 cement to sand ratio. The third and fourth bricks were developed using waste plastic polybags. The study further evaluated the performance analysis, energy efficiency along with a comparative cost analysis. A comparative analysis was also carried out with the conventional fly ash bricks. Study observed that the energy efficiency of such bricks is significantly higher and their application potential as building bricks is immense. However, the strength of such bricks was observed to be lower. This further requires optimization of design mix and plastic waste. For stubble-based bricks further long term, durability analysis is required.

Futuristic construction practices would depend mostly on sustainable infrastructure. Unconventional materials such as bamboo, jute fibers, rice husk, fly ash, and recycled aggregates are some of the recent alternate materials that are recently researched upon to develop sustainable infrastructure. Authors have examined the potential of bamboo and fly ash to develop sustainable prefabricated wall panels for the construction industry. In the present study, the behavior of a prefabricated bamboo reinforced wall panels under the concentrated load is presented. Six wall panels of size 2440 × 305 × 50 mm were constructed based on two types of design mixes of cement mortar. First design mix constituted mainly of OPC cement and sand of 1:2 ratio. In the second design mix 63.71% of cement by weight was replaced by fly ash using a design of experiments (DOE) based optimization study. Bamboo (Bambusa balcoa) strips were used for preparing the reinforcement mat and then the mat was treated with lime and epoxy. Both groups of bamboo reinforced wall panels were tested under the concentrated load as per ASTM E72 guidelines. A maximum load of 5 kN was applied to test the indentation in the panels. It was observed that the wall panels based on optimized design mix had better strength than that without fly ash. The tested panels were observed to fail under the concentrated load which makes them unsuitable for application in construction industry. However, further research is required on cement mortar to improve the performance of these wall panels.

The novelty of this study is the combined experimental and statistical approach, which is showcased to predict and optimise bamboo–mortar bond strength, incorporating the effects of various material factors. The design of experiments method was used to quantify the impact of multiple factors affecting the bond strength. Firstly, different experimental pull-out tests were conducted in the laboratory to determine the effect of various factors (water/cement ratio, curing duration, cement/sand ratio, fly ash content and bamboo treatment) on bond strength development. Three failure patterns were observed – bamboo failure, bond failure and mortar failure. Secondly, using a two-level full factorial design method, different statistical models were formulated. These models were developed based on the surface treatment of the bamboo (model M1 (untreated) and model M2 (treated and untreated)). The effects of single factors and their interactions on bond strength development were quantified. The developed models were validated for the prediction of bond strength based on different factors. The developed statistical models were found to predict and simulate the experimental behaviour of bond strength with sufficient accuracy.