Identification of dune sands used in building by their characteristics and a granular model for an arid environment

The use of natural sand has proven its importance in several fields, including construction. There are many different types and varieties, which prompts us to study the determination of their characteristics to know the extent of the possibility of use in desirable fields. Dune sand has been used as a building material since ancient times. The results of our experimental study on 24 classes of dune sands from the arid regions of Algeria (Timimoun and Adrar) showed that most of them are non-coarse sands and that the size of the coarse grains does not exceed 2 mm. After a series of identification experiments, it proved to be physically clean, which is confirmed by the sand equivalent coefficient: the lowest value is (71.29), and the water content does not exceed (0.65%), while the absorption rate varies from 2.5 to 3.12%. From a chemical point of view, the results show that these zones are siliceous sands, where the lowest proportion of silica is 84%, while the maximum concentration of limestone is 9.55%, and the sulfate content does not exceed 1.15 mig/l. The novelty of this study lies in the fact that the use of fractal analysis makes it possible to determine the granular distribution for each sand so that sand classes can be identified by fractal dimension. The physicochemical results of these numerous sands provide a bank of scientific data, contributing upstream to the selection of the sand to be used and its precise control in concrete or mortar.