| Summary: | Growing construction activities requires increase in construction materials. The conventional method of constructions results in a rise in construction waste. Formwork as a main factor to generate construction waste has been the topic of investigation. The permanent formwork has been introduced with the aim to: promote the construction technology process that put quality, safety and environment issues into account, reduce the cost of workers and reduce the overall time of construction project. At present the permanent formwork available in the market are made from steel, and plastic and the cost is still high. Therefore this study is looking at the potential of commercial wood-wool cement board (WWCB) as permanent formwork. A series of concrete columns were constructed with and without integrated WWCB with different configurations of WWCB as permanent formwork. These columns were subjected to axial load and the compressive strength and failure modes were recorded. The results show that the present of permanent formwork from WWCB improves the compressive strength of the column. With the permanent formwork, the size of concrete column can be reduced and able to support the same load as column without permanent formwork. Therefore this construction method can reduce the overall cost of construction. © (2013) Trans Tech Publications, Switzerland.
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