Monday 24 January 2022

Research Networks Generated by Organizational Structures, Co-Authorships and Citations: A Case Study of German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (Idiv) by Zhao Qu*

Research Networks Generated by Organizational Structures, Co-Authorships and Citations: A Case Study of German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (Idiv) by Zhao Qu* in
Open Access Journal of Biogeneric Science and Research


Abstract

Exploring whether different patterns emerge across networks generated by organizational structures, co-authorships and citations for characterizing and evaluating cooperative relationships is particularly important for transferring the research results into practice. This research-in-progress paper focuses on using the structure of scientific collaborations and mapping knowledge transfer to gain insight into the influence of collaborative research centres linked to the German Research Foundation (DFG) funding. Within the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv), the DFG sponsors research conducted across all participating universities and institutes by more than hundred research groups who bring their expertise to the manifold research fields of biodiversity. Using iDiv’s research from 2013-2020, we build co-authorship networks and identify the most cohesive communities in terms of collaboration and compare them with groups presented on its website. Corresponding cited and citing works are analysed by distributions to investigate the knowledge’s intellectual structure. Our findings show that the number of publications and the intensity of research collaboration have maintained a steady increase except 2018. Despite the highly cohesive cooperation structure addressed by iDiv, the internal scientific collaboration has not gained strong momentum compared with its growing trends in international collaborations. The tendency towards covering cross-disciplinary research foci is not evident.

Introduction

Cooperation between researchers, academic institutions and companies is gaining importance as research is increasingly being conducted in both homogeneous and heterogeneous collaboration contexts, including structured programs such as the collaborative research centres, and publicly funded projects between universities and companies [1-3]. The proportion of collaborative research conducted between researchers from multiple disciplines and multiple research institutions or involving non-academic partners in all fields is growing [4]. Cooperation offers great potential by linking competencies, perspectives, experiences, resources, and personalities. However, various obstacles stand in the way of fruitful cooperation in such a context. For instance, when dividing up the tasks involved in applying for a collaborative research centre, it becomes more challenging to integrate the objectives as the larger the group and the more heterogeneous the actors. The German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) offers the possibility to investigate typical problems (e.g., changing memberships, allocation of output, fluid boundaries of the working groups involved in the cooperation, the informative value of funding acknowledgements) since this DFG centre is established upon cooperation from 1995 called “Unibund”, extending the network from members based primarily in Halle, Jena and Leipzig to researchers from 30 nations. Eleven research institutions (Figure 1) joined forces to establish iDiv within the network have equal footings (S. Matthiä, personal communication, December 4, 2008). Collaborations with experts worldwide are central momentum at iDiv, and 13 core research groups have been newly established since its founding (Table 1). The composition of personnel at iDiv is somewhat complicated, with employees and members, of which the membership includes full members, associated members, and honorary members. Although there is no requirement in the cooperation agreement that the centre needs to be labelled by its members as the author's affiliation, this complex structure would significantly impact a deeper understanding of bibliometric research findings. For instance, a paper affiliated with iDiv would not necessarily imply that the author is employed by the centre, whereas the research is primarily done within iDiv. The iDiv context may refer to the physical space or the research network. A new question arises amid characterizing and evaluating cooperative relationships: whether different patterns of networks emerge between research groups generated by organizational structures and scientific collaborations?

Table 1: Members of the iDiv network.

Figure 1: Cooperation partners of the consortium.

Collaboration in groups has a long tradition in experimental sciences [5], while collaboration in research networks is a parallel and complementary to the research group in a university department or an industrial laboratory [6]. In general, research networks differ from research groups in that they offer greater flexibility and less bureaucracy. There is an increasing number of studies on scientific collaboration networks [7]. Bibliometric research of scientific collaboration has been conducted in various fields, particularly by using co-authorship data [8-12], providing a quantitative dimension of the frequency and extent of cooperation among researchers in the practice of their research. It should be considered that co-authorships do not fully represent collaborations as not all collaborations lead to co-authored publications, and not all co-authored publications are based on collaborations. However, this method has undoubtedly proven its worth, especially in combination with network analyses. Research on biodiversity, its relation to ecosystem functioning and services, and the assessment of the impacts of environmental change on biodiversity calls for an interdisciplinary perspective [13,14]. While several studies have analysed the disciplinary variety of bibliographic references in papers to express the acceptance of concepts, methods and data from other subject areas, other studies have analysed the distribution of citations received by these papers from other areas. The analysis of citations and co-citations, in both cited and citing publications, constitutes one of the main approaches to the interdisciplinary phenomenon [15,16].

This paper is an evaluation of the current state of research networks of a collaborative research centre through the analysis of articles and citations. Specifically, it aims to provide a micro-picture of networks generated by organizational structures, co-authorships and citations within iDiv, and examine the relative importance of membership in networks for individual publication output. However, it is not only the pure quantity structure of publication activities that provides information about changes, but also structural elements of publication activity. This paper addresses two main questions for exploring whether different patterns emerge across networks:1) How different are networks of cooperation bounded by membership and collaboration presented by scientific publications? Are members within a research centre/group more likely to be co-authors, or the external authors yield a higher collaboration potential? 2) Whether insights from different fields are being acknowledged with one another or are instead located in disciplinary siloes? That is, is there a growing trend towards cross-disciplinary collaboration through citation analysis of iDiv biodiversity-focused research? This special issue is a bridging effort to bring together scientific knowledge producers and network analysis by exploring the structure of collaboration in the social context. The findings may be informative in establishing, assessing, and evaluating research networks.

Data and Methods

For answering the questions addressed in this paper, bibliographic data of 2,107 journal articles identified by DOIs inserted on the website of iDiv’s research published between 2013 and 2020 are retrieved from Web of Science Core Collection coupled with network analysis of co-authorships and citations. Co-authorship networks are generally adopted to provide an overview of the critical contributors within iDiv. Collaborative activities between communities will impact the understanding of how scientific research can add value and offer insights into central issues of concern for policy and practice. Collectively, authorship and citation analyses identify the distribution and accumulation of capital that develops as the centre evolves. The iDiv’s papers herein are first analysed through annual records, source of the leading authors, and the degree of collaboration. The number of authors per article ranges from one to 728, with over 70 per cent of iDiv’s research having three to nine authors. Therefore, we use the percentage of articles with more than two authors to measure collaboration intensity. Furthermore, we use a three-fields-plot based on a Sankey diagram that visualises how journals, research topics and countries/regions are interrelated. The general bibliometric analysis also compares the whole set of cited references and citing papers with the collected publications by research area in general.

We extract the authors and affiliation information for exploring the network of actors within the iDiv research network and its corresponding influence on scientific knowledge production. The expression differences of authors at the same institution poses difficulties in the data processing of this study. We apply a thesaurus file created through a three-step process to merge 786 institutional names from 3,841 author affiliations listed in the raw data. The data cleaning tools of VantagePoint   perform software cleaning. Then, parts involving problems with misspellings, language conversions and abbreviations that have not been approached (e.g., University Jene, Gottingen University or CSIC) are integrated manually. Finally, experts review the processed data to keep the names of their affiliations standardized. We employ network-clustering algorithms in VOSviewer 1.6.16 to map and analyse the patterns of corresponding networks. The structures of co-authorship networks formed by authors and institutions are further compared with groups and networks bounded by memberships within iDiv. Given the limited team size of 13 research groups, the full membership list serves as an additional basis for interpreting the co-authorship network. As this is one of the numerous case studies in the ongoing project research, we conduct a preliminary analysis of the conceptual and intellectual structures of knowledge using data extracted from 6,467 references and 17,751 citing papers as at 31.12.2020 of 106 highly cited publications within the dataset as aforesaid. A direct citation analysis develops the intellectual structure as this approach provides a more accurate representation of the taxonomy of scientific and technical knowledge. We use a historical direct citation network coupled with trend topics to visualise topics of interest and the following debate that scholars open in the scientific field.

Results and Discussion

General trends in iDiv’s research

Between 2013 and 2017, research of iDiv presented a growing trend in counts and international scientific collaborations, with minor fluctuations since 2018 (Table 2). Although the intensity of collaboration does not vary significantly from year to year, iDiv has maintained considerable momentum in international collaboration.

Table 2: Publication count and collaboration intensity by year.

The interconnections among journals, research topics and countries can provide useful insights. Hence, we present a three-fields plot in Figure 2, which shows the interactions among the most relevant publication outlets (left), author keywords (middle) and countries (right) of iDiv’s papers. Meanwhile, Table 3 presents the distribution of primary source journals by subject area. We find that studies on biodiversity mainly distribute in journal Ecology Letters, most of which are authored by German scholars. Similarly, the journal Global Change Biology has published the majority of the climate change-related studies, again mainly authored by German scholars. In general, authors from Germany and the United States have broadly investigated research topics concerning biodiversity, species richness, functional diversity, and climate change. Chinese scholars have shown a particular interest in bef-china related research. On an aggregate level, authors from European countries have a great interest in ecosystem studies. Among the journals, Ecology publishes studies in a comparatively broad range of topics including disturbance, global change, competition, and community assembly.

Table 3: Journals by subject area.

Figure  2: Three-fields plot by country, affiliation, and sources (Top 15).

There are 3,509 documents mainly with German authors of 88,538 references included in the articles of iDiv were co-cited over five times. Nearly 50 per cent of 33,272 citing papers (without self-citations) to iDiv’s research are published by authors from the United States and China. We compare the whole set of cited references, citing papers and the collected publications by research areas in general. Terms shown in blue colour in Table 4 refer to areas where both iDiv’s research and its references have explored. The parts marked in grey colour refer to the overlap in research areas between iDiv’s research and its citing papers. Nearly 90 per cent of the leading research areas covered by the three groups of publications are consistent, but with minor differences in each area's proportion. The iDiv scholars have cited works on Statistics Probability, Computer Science Interdisciplinary Applications and Cell Biology, while related topics are not explored further. Likewise, citing papers have not broadly investigated issues concerning Biochemical Research Methods, Mathematical Computational Biology and Economics. However, we can find in the distribution of research areas of the forward citations that topics not covered by the references have been extended in subsequent studies. There is a constant flow of relevant research on topics not addressed in the previously cited literature.

Table 4: Comparison of iDiv research, references and citing papers by research areas (Top 25).

Primary contributors and scientific collaboration networks

The network generated by research collaboration of iDiv is relatively broad, both in terms of the average number of authors per article (6.92) and the number of co-authors per item (12.1). We can identify the equally high rates of the collaboration of highly productive scholars and organizations in this collection, which is measured respectively by an individual author’s contributions to a published set of papers and affiliation’s total links (Table 5). The following primary authors are all full members of iDiv, while nearly half of the institutions are outside the network defined by the cooperative agreement.

Table 5: Primary contributors of iDiv’s research ranked by counts (Top 10).

The preliminary results of the network analysis reveal that there are 957 authors with more than five articles and collaborated with others at least five times. For a more straightforward layout of the network of iDiv-related scientific collaborations and to reduce the influence of multi-author articles, we used fractional counting methods to analyse co-authorship among authors with at least ten publications (Figure 3), gathering 325 authors and 13 clusters. Among of them, 11 of 13 research group leaders are scattered across eight different clusters. Close internal collaboration is identified within cluster seven generated by leaders from groups of Biodiversity Conservation, Ecosystem Services and Macroecology. However, cluster 12 dominated by the group leader of Evolutionary Ecology is more independent than the others. As the size of a node depends on the score of Avg. normalized. citation, the actors within clusters one and 11 with the research foci of Ecology and Plant Sciences correspond to relatively more citations.

Figure 3: Co-authorship collaboration network.

Following the approach outlined above, we map out networks of collaboration at the level of representative institutions coupled with an overlay visualization (Figure 4). It consists of 634 nodes and 10 clusters. The temporal distribution of collaboration indicates that the collaborative structure changed over time, from a loose interconnection of clusters to an expanded structure in terms of intensity of connection and the number of new actors joining the network. Three universities from “Unibund” (Halle – Jena – Leipzig) together with Ufz Helmholtz Ctr Environm Res as institutions joined forces to establish iDiv have also played a prominent role in the scientific collaboration shown as both maps.

Figure 4: Institutional collaboration network and an overlay visualization.

Trend topics and citation networks

References of highly cited iDiv’s papers range between 1994 and 2019, mainly including scholarly works from the United States and Germany. Respectively, citing papers from 2014 to 2020 have been broadly conducted by scholars from China and the United States. We map trend topics by author keywords extracted from highly cited research, its references and citing papers to compare the conceptual structures of knowledge, setting the parameters to a minimum word frequency of five. iDiv’s highly cited papers in the last decade have shown common interests in the topics frequently explored in cited references between 2008 and 2014, such as species richness and functional traits. Authors’ research foci in citing papers are forest management and risk assessment, while iDiv related scholars have contributed to studies on biodiversity (Figure 5).

Figure 5: Trend topics in sequence.

We employ the historiographic mapping to trace research paths and investigate the knowledge’s intellectual structure (Figure 6). Each node represents a document cited by others, and each edge represents a direct citation. The list of articles is shown in Table 6. The direction of the arrows in Figure 6 explains the chronical change of research trends from the past, steering the research paths of biodiversity, bioinformatics, ecosystem and biological evolution. For example, Tittensor [17] provided a comprehensive mid-term assessment of progress toward international biodiversity targets, and then the subsequent research discussed how biodiversity was changing by combining synthesis, theory and detection [18 -25]. This contributed to promoting articles facilitating quantitative analysis of temporal patterns of biodiversity [26-28] and research on a typology of generalized knowledge claims [29]. Recently, changes in biodiversity have been explored in a broader societal context together with economic models and human activities [30-34].

Table 6: Legend of historiographic mapping (LC: Local Citations, TC: Total Citations).

Figure6:

Conclusion

The preliminary analysis presented here suggests that the networks generated by the organizational structures, scientific collaborations and citations can potentially provide additional insight into the impact of funded collaborative centre beyond that achieved through typical analyses of the research outputs based on publication and citation count data. The number of publications and the intensity of research collaboration have maintained a steady increase since 2013. iDiv is dedicated to bringing together member institutions to cover cross-disciplinary research foci, while the internal scientific collaboration among members has not demonstrated strong momentum. Nearly 90 per cent of the leading research areas covered by cited references, citing papers and collected publications are consistent. Research paths presented by direct citation links in highly cited papers indicate the coherent research foci of iDiv on ecosystem, biodiversity and bioinformatics. Nevertheless, the strong international research collaboration developed by member institutions provides an expanding platform for knowledge production, exchange and transfer than the established organisational structure. Further research will provide a deeper understanding of whether the establishment of iDiv has strengthened the internal links between members with existing cooperation and its potential influences on the emergence of new research communities. Moreover, data retrieved from sources like funding texts and personal profiles are further coupled to explore what facilitates iDiv’s scientific research and relevant collaboration at different levels.

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Saturday 22 January 2022

A Study on Strength and Durability Properties of Vermiculite Mortar by S Sreeja*

A Study on Strength and Durability Properties of Vermiculite Mortar by S Sreeja* in
Open Access Journal of Biogeneric Science and Research


Abstract

The material like sand is becoming scarce as huge amounts of construction works is taken up as the population is growing on year by year. In India, especially Andhra Pradesh which was recently separated from Telangana is posing a wide need for expression of several structures at capital and other urban centers. Therefore, alternative material for sand like vermiculite is to be assessed analyzed and recommended as a desirable material for construction works. In this present study, the different proportions of vermiculite were used as a replacement to the sand about 10%, 15%, 20% by weight of sand. The experimental investigation on strength properties and durability of vermiculite mortar was carried on and also supported with X-ray powdered analysis. The experimental results of vermiculite mortar had shown excellent results.

Keywords: Vermiculite, fine aggregates, OPC, Acid attack

Introduction

The advance in the open field of Construction Industry represents a huge step towards for making cement mortar a high-tech material with enhanced characteristics. Mortar is a broadly used construction substance for different types of construction due to its stability and strength. Every mortar structure should do its intended functions through the anticipated life of the structure, regardless of external exposure conditions. The ability of mortar to hold out any environmental condition that may result in premature failure or several damages is a major worry to the engineering profession. The deteriorating effect of acid media on fine aggregate based construction has become a worrying problem all over the World. These media generally occur as acidic rains and mist. The use of vermiculite can achieve not only economic and ecological benefits, but technical benefits as well [1-12].

Determination of the influence of application of different proportions of Vermiculite on various water cement ratios and to produce an acidic resistance of mortar with good workability. The effectiveness of partial replacement of sand by its weight with 10%, 15%, 20% of vermiculite on compressive force, water absorption and Acid resistance with various mix proportions of mortar which holds in the vermiculite.

Materials

Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC-53 Grade)

Sand

Table 1

Vermiculite

The vermiculite used for this work was obtained from Om Santhi Enterprises, jogipalli, SPSR Nellore (Dt). Table 2.

Table 2: The vermiculite used for this work was obtained from Om Santhi Enterprises, jogipalli, SPSR Nellore (Dt).

Water

The water used for improvement of free of acids, organic matter, suspended solids, alkalis and impurities which when present may have adverse effect on the strength of mortar.

Results and Discussion

Table 3

Grain size distribution value for vermiculite= 3.03

Table 3: Grain size distribution of vermiculite.

Figure: Grain size distribution for vermiculite.

Compressive Strength of Mortar Containing Vermiculite

The values of Compressive strength of reference specimen and the specimens containing various percentages of vermiculite with different water cement ratios. Table 4.

Table 4: Compressive strength values for 20% vermiculite.

Figure 4Compressive strength of mortar with replacement of 20% vermiculite.

From the Figure 4.7.1, it can be seen that the replacement percentage of vermiculite is 20%, the maximum strength is obtained at 0.45 water cement ratio. It is found that Compressive strength is decreases with the increase in the water cement ratio. Table 5.

Table 5: Compressive strength values for 15% vermiculite mortar.

Figure: Compressive strength of mortar with replacement of 15% vermiculite.

From Figure, it can be seen that the replacement percentage of vermiculite is 15%. Maximum strength is obtained at 0.45 water cement ratio. It is found that compressive strength is decreased with the increasing of water cement ratio. The compressive strength values of 15% vermiculite cubes are more with compared to 20% vermiculite. Table 6.

Table 6: Compressive strength values for 10% vermiculite mortar.

Figure: Compressive strength of mortar with replacement of 10% vermiculite.

From the Figure 4.7.3, it can be seen that the percentage of vermiculite is 10%, maximum strength is obtained at 0.45 water cement ratio. It is found that compressive strength is increased with decreasing of water cement ratio but workability is decreased because the absorbing capacity of water is more for vermiculite. From the above result by comparing to 20% replacement of vermiculite and 15% replacement of vermiculite 10% vermiculite give a good result. Mortar is nonstructural members for that reason the strength is not a major aspect. Table 7

Table 7: Compressive strength values for conventional mortar.

Figure 4.7.4: Compressive strength of conventional.

From the above figure 4, it can be seen that the without any replacement of vermiculite with different water cement ratios maximum strength is obtained at 0.45 water cement ratio.

Acid Attack on Vermiculite Mortar

Effect of acid attack on mortar containing 20% vermiculite

The acid test values of the specimens containing 20% vermiculite with different water cement ratios after immersed in acid are found experimentally and it is given below in table 8

Table 8: Result of acid attack for 20% vermiculite.

Figure: Acid test of mortar with replacement of 20% vermiculite.

From figure above, it shows that the values of weight loss are decreased with increasing of water cement ratio. It is found that the replacement of 20% vermiculite will reduces the weight loss in acid attack and this statement can be verified in above graph.

Effect of acid attack on mortar containing 15% vermiculite

The acid test values of specimens containing 15% vermiculite with different water cement ratios after immersed in acid are found experimentally and it is given below Table 9.

Table 9: Results of acid attack for 15% vermiculite.

Figure: Acidic test of mortar with replacement of 15% vermiculite.

From Figure, it is found that the replacement of 15 % of vermiculite also reduces the weight loss in acid attack but it is lower when compared to 20% of vermiculate. The decrease of percentage of vermiculite maintains the weight loss in acid attack as represented in above graph 4.9.2.

Effect of acid attack on mortar containing 10% vermiculite

The acid test values of the specimens containing 10% vermiculite with different water cement ratios after immersed in acid are found experimentally and it is given below table 10.

Table 10: Result of acid attack for 10% vermiculite.

Figure: Acidic test of mortar with replacement of 10% vermiculite.

From Figure 4.9.3 it is found that the replacement of 10 % of vermiculite also reduces the weight loss in acid attack but it is lower when compared to 15% & 20% of vermiculate. The decrease of percentage of vermiculite maintains the weight loss in acid attack as represented in 4.9.3 graph.

Effect of Acid Attack on Conventional Mortar Containing 100% Sand

The acid test values of the conventional specimens with different water cement ratios after immersed in acid are found experimentally and it is given below Table 11.

Table 11: Result of acid attack for conventional.

Figure: Acidic test of mortar for conventional.

From Figure 4.9.4 it is found that loss of weight is more in conventional with compare to 10%, 15% & 20% of vermiculite.

Loss of Weights of Specimens

Comparison between 20% vermiculite and conventional mortar due to loss of   weight

The loss of weights for 20% vermiculite and conventional specimens after immersed in acid are found experimentally and it is given below Table 12.

Table 12:  Results due to of loss of weight for 20% vermiculite& conventional.

Figure: 20% vermiculite and conventional due to loss of weights.

Comparison between 15%vermiculite and conventional due to loss of weights

The loss of weights for 15% vermiculite and conventional specimens after immersed in acid are found experimentally and it is given below Table 13.

Table 13: Result due to of loss of weight for 15% vermiculite& conventional.

Figure: 15% vermiculite and conventional due to loss of weights.

Comparison between 10% vermiculite and conventional cubes due to loss of weights

The loss of weights for 10% vermiculite and conventional specimens after immersed in acid are found experimentally and it is given below Table 14.

Table 14: Result due to of loss of weight for 10% vermiculite& conventional.

Figure: 10% vermiculite and conventional due to loss of weights.

Compressive Strength Values Before Acid Attack and After  Acid Attack

Table 15: Compressive strength values for 20% vermiculite by acid attack.

Table 16: Compressive strength values variation for 15% vermiculite by acid attack.

Table 17: Compressive strength values variations for 10% vermiculite by acid attack

Table 18: Compressive strength values variation for conventional by acid attack.

Figure: Variations of compressive strengths for 20% vermiculite.

Figure: Variations of compressive strengths for 15% vermiculite

Figure: Variations of compressive strengths for 10% vermiculite.

Figure 4: Variations of compressive strengths for conventional.

Loss of Compressive Strengths

The comparison of controlled mortar with 20% vermiculite mortar containing different water cement ratios are 0.45, 0.55, 0.65. The loss of compressive strength values of the conventional and 20% vermiculite mixes are found experimentally and it is given below Table 19 & 20.

Table 19: Comparison between 20% vermiculite and conventional due to loss of compressive strengths

Table 20: Comparison between 15% vermiculite and conventional due to loss of compressive strength

Figure: 20% vermiculite and conventional due to loss of compressive strength.

Figure: 15% vermiculite and conventional due to loss of compressive strength.

The comparison of controlled mortar with 15% vermiculite mortar containing different water cement ratios are 0.45, 0.55, 0.65. The loss of compressive strength values of the conventional and 15% vermiculite mixes are found experimentally and it is given above Table 21.

Table 21: Comparison between 10% vermiculite and conventional due to loss of compressive strength.

Figure: 10% vermiculite and conventional due to loss of compressive strength.

The comparison of controlled with 10% vermiculite mortar containing different water cement ratios are 0.45, 0.55, 0.65. The loss of compressive strength values of the conventional and 10% vermiculite are found experimentally and it is given above Table.

Weight Comparisions

The average weight values are calculated for 20%, 15%, 10% vermiculite and also for conventional and tabulated below 22.

Table 22: Mass values for different proportions of vermiculite.

Figure 4.13.1 Mass values difference between vermiculite and conventional.

From the above Table 20%, 15% and 10% vermiculite is light weight with compare to conventional. 20% vermiculite gives best result for light weight mortar these values are graphically shown in figure X-ray Powder Diffraction Analysis:

X-Ray Powder Diffraction Analysis

X-Ray diffraction analysis has been used for the fingerprint characterization of pozzolanic material and for the determination of their crystal structures. The basis of the diffraction phenomenon is that the wavelength of the incident radiation (i.e., X-rays) is in the order of magnitude of the inter atomic distance in the crystalline solids. The XRD results of conventional and fine aggregate with partial replacement with 10% by vermiculite fines are presented in above Fig..and Fig .XRD results are presented in Table.

Figure: XRD Result for conventional mix.

Figure: XRD Result for 10% Replaced by vermiculite.

Table 23.: XRD Patterns.

Conclusion

  1. Influence of application of different proportions of Vermiculite on various water cement ratios was noticed.
  2. Acidic resistance of vermiculite mortar with good workability and better strength to with stand harsh environmental conditions is achieved.
  3. Partial replacement of sand by its weight with 10%, 15%, and 20% of vermiculite was done and it is recommended to achieve good results at 10% replacement levels in compressive
  4. In acid attack test 15% vermiculite achieve good result with compare to conventional
  5. Mortar with 20% vermiculite is light weight with compare to conventional mortar with 100%
  6. Compressive strength, water absorption and Acid resistance tests with various proportion of mortar which contains the vermiculite was performed and Positive results were noticed at 10% replacement levels, 20% vermiculite and 15% vermiculite.