ITB Students Wins 1st Place in 2025 National Concrete Competition

TEMPO.CO, Bandung - A team of students from the Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB) have processed ceramic waste as a substitute for sand in concrete production. The strength of the concrete is designed for buildings with a height of four floors or more. The innovation won first place in the final round of the National Concrete Competition 2025 held by Udayana University Bali on May 10-11.

The ceramic waste-based concrete, developed by a team of ITB Civil Engineering program students from the 2023 class, consists of Sandra Regina Tambun, Razan Aisyrinata, and Barra Fatta Abdullah. They were supervised by lecturer Patria Kusumaningrum.

In the competition, the team created cylindrical concrete with a diameter of 15 centimeters and a height of 30 centimeters. "The testing is done in the form of concrete without a frame inside," said Barra to Tempo on Tuesday, May 20, 2025.

The production of the concrete includes a mixture of cement, gravel, water, and crushed ceramic waste as a substitute for sand. The composition refers to the concrete guidelines for high-rise buildings. "At a minimum for a four-floor building," said Sandra, adding that the concrete strength can withstand pressures up to 31 megapascals (MPa).

From various types of construction waste, the team decided to select ceramic waste as a potential reusable material. This selection was also based on the analysis results from various scientific journals.

They collected ceramic waste from residential complexes and cleaned it to be fed into a machine in the campus laboratory to be crushed into powder. "The processing method is just crushing," said Razan.

The crushing duration of the ceramic with the machine ranges from 30-60 minutes. The desired size of the ceramic powder is a maximum of 4.75 millimeters, similar to sand grains. Before being brought to the competition, the concrete's compressive strength was tested in the campus laboratory. With the same material, the ceramic powder can also be used for other concrete, such as in residential construction.

According to Razan, the use of ceramic waste as a substitute for sand in concrete production can reduce the extraction of sand from nature for construction. Additionally, it can reduce transportation costs for sand mining and reuse ceramic waste. The development of this innovation includes equipment for crushing ceramic waste to resemble sand.

According to ITB's website, the team named El Hormigon made it to the top 5 finalists that advanced to the finals out of 40 competition participants. During the preliminary round, the ITB team encountered problems in the pouring process due to misreading the absorption value test. As a result, the concrete mix became too liquid. This experience provided an important lesson about data validation.

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