Fly ash based geopolymer composites partially replaced with silica fume: An experimental investigation

Abstract

Nowadays, the environmental impact which is caused by the industrial development specially in construction section have led to an increasing interest in geopolymer field and thereby have promoted the research in terms of full replacement of Portland cement binder and feasible utilization of waste materials. In this paper, an attempt was done to fabricate a binding matrix that is totally cement free and based on eco-friendly materials. The effect of adding silica fume on strength properties, physical properties and resistance to abrasion were studied. In general, silica fume was found to enhance the investigated properties due to the fineness of silica fume particles which generally formed geopolymeric composites with more compact matrix. The geopolymeric matrix which is fabricated with the presence of silica fume has shown an obvious improvement in terms of physical properties. Moreover, the compactness of the matrix led to a good performance regarding the abrasion resistance, to be more specific, the abraded surface was more resistant to weight loss after adding silica fume. In addition to that, an acceptable degree of correlation was obtained when the results of the studied properties were linked, results from strength tests and the ones from non-destructive tests were having a good degree of correlation.