The boom in infrastructure development has resulted in acute shortage of river sand. To address this issue, it is required to find substitutes for river sand for producing concrete. One among the locally available marginal resource is laterite. In this study, an attempt is made to study the performance of cement concrete using laterite as fine aggregate in replacement levels of 25, 50, 75 and 100% to natural fine aggregates (river sand). Studies were carried out in two stages, initially river sand is replaced with laterite quarry waste (unprocessed laterite), and then it is replaced with the processed laterite. The workability and compressive strength characteristics of concrete are studied. Results indicate that, the decrease in compressive strength of concrete with increase in replacement levels of river sand by unprocessed laterite was more, compared to concrete with processed laterite. However, there is only 7% reduction in strength for laterized concrete with 100% processed laterite compared to control concrete. Micro structure studies were also conducted to understand the morphology of river sand and laterite particles with the cement matrix using scanning electron microscope.
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