Building Materials | CE 009

Any material used for construction of any static amenities of human civilization is commonly known as building materials. The word building has two meanings. The first one is what we feel by the word building, like a residential building, school building, office building, hotel building, hospital building etc [an elaborated list is available in CE 005]. The second one is a noun of the verb 'to build' - means to construct. So, whatever material required to build or to construct any structure whatsoever is a building material.

A huge variety of materials starting from naturally occurring clay or mud to highly sophisticated man made materials like fiber reinforced composites are used as building material. Naturally, the list of building materials contains a huge number of items. These items may first be classified into different groups. And for easy memorization, number of groups should be as low as possible. In this article, however, it has not been possible to reduce the number of groups below 20 as follows:

Building Material Groups
01. Brick
02. Sand
03. Stone
04. Timber
05. Glass

06. Lime
07. Cement
08. Steel
09. Water
10. Admixture

11. Metal
12. Rubber
13. Adhesive
14. Paint
15. Bitumen

16. Flooring Items
17. Sanitary Plumbing Items
18. Water Supply Items
19. Electrical Items
20. Miscellaneous Items

It should be strictly remembered that the above nomenclatures are not the names of any material but the names of material group. Brick means different types of bricks, brick products and special bricks. Sand means all types of sands used as fine aggregates. Stone means all types of stones used as coarse aggregates, flooring materials and others. Cement means all types cements and cement products like mortar, concrete etc. Detailed discussions on each of these will be presented as far as possible.

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