Summary: | All these years, commonly used repairing and retrofitting materials are cement paste, grout, patching, and epoxy. However, due to the expensive and unreliable application, an alternative material is needed. This research emphases the use of waste material such as palm oil fuel ash (POFA) and alkaline activator (sodium hydroxide) in cement paste as repair and retrofitting material. Hence, it focuses on the physical properties of activated POFA cement paste by means of Ultrasonic Pulse Velocity and compressive strength test. In this research, three types of paste are prepared: OPC, POFA paste, and Activated POFA paste. The POFA used is sieve to 212 µm particle size, and the alkaline activator used is sodium hydroxide. These pastes are used to fill concrete cubes with a hole on the center, representing a core structure on site. The paste is let to harden for a day before being tested for quality using UPV and compressive strength using compression test. POFA cement tends to improve the structure strength by up to 2% but has defect in filling as it shows 1.42% less ultrasonic pulse velocity reading compare to OPC. Whereas, activated POFA cement shows 0.5% increase in structure strength with 0.84% less defects compare to OPC. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022.
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