Mechanical Properties and Drying Shrinkage Investigation of Alkali-Activated Mortar Using Waste Glass Powder

Abstract

Alkali-activated mortar (AAM) is one of the products of waste glass recycling that exhibits promising potential for wide engineering applications such as the construction industry. In this study, recycled waste glass powder-based additives, namely, Silica Fume (SF) and Nano-SiO2 (NS), were investigated for their potential to enhance the mechanical properties (strength) and drying-shrinkage resistance of AAM. The results indicated that 5.0% and 1.5% were the optimum SF and NS dosages, respectively, for optimizing AAM performance in terms of the compressive strength, flexural strength, and drying-shrinkage resistance. A prediction model, based on backpropagation (BP) neural network analysis, was also satisfactorily formulated and preliminarily validated for predicting the drying shrinkage of AAM containing SF or NS.