Investigation of novel sustainable concrete using optimization technique

Abstract

Concrete industry, the largest consumer of natural resources such as water, sand and crushing stone needs to be reoriented by adopting environmental friendly and a highly sustainable technology. Concrete with ceramic industrial waste is termed as Ceracrete. The properties of the ingredients of concrete need comparison before replacing the fine aggregate (FA) and coarse aggregate (CA) by ceramic waste. River sand is used as fine aggregate and broken stone as coarse aggregate. Then the concrete mix is designed as per the IS code provision for M20 grade. Concrete cubes are cast by replacing FA and CA by ceramic waste from 0% to 50% in steps of 10% as type 1(FA replacement), type 2 (CA replacement) and type 3 (FA and CA replacement). The compressive strength and workability of three types of concrete are compared with those of the conventional concrete (0% replacement). Fine aggregate replacement by ceramic waste (type 1) shows better compressive strength than type 2, type 3 and conventional concrete. But the water absorption of type 1 concrete is higher, compared to the other types. The workability of the type 1 concrete is smaller. The optimum percentage of replacement of type 1 concrete is found by design of experiments using the Taguchi method. Concrete with good workability and higher compressive strength is observed for 6.62 % to 13.97 % of replacement of fine aggregate by ceramic waste, whereas, the water absorption for this optimum percentage of replacement is similar to that of the conventional concrete. Hence ceramic waste is used as a replacement material for fine aggregate in the field of construction after analyzing the structural properties, durability, bond strength etc., The analysis shows the higher contribution of the percentage of replacement to the improvement of workability and compressive strength.