Mechanical and durability properties of fly ash and GGBS based fiber reinforced concrete

Abstract

Concrete is one of the most commonly and widely adopted material for construction. Cement is used as primary binder material to produce Concrete. However, every tonne of Cement production releases one tonne of greenhouse gases which results in global warming; due to continuous and ever increased usage of Cement and natural sand are causing uncontrollable global warming and depletion of natural resources respectively year by year. This tendency needs to be retarded if not arrested, by developing a comprehensive approach to use more and more pozzolanic mineral admixtures and manufactured sand (M-Sand) in Concrete. In this study on fiber reinforced concrete (with steel fiber @ 1% of binder), Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC) is replaced up to 50% with Fly Ash and Ground Granulated Blast-Furnace slag (GGBS) for M30 grade of Concrete. Mechanical properties like compressive strength and split tensile strength at 7 days and 28day age are tested. Additionally, durability tests like water absorption and sorptivity tests are conducted after 28days of curing. The test results indicated that workability was increased and there was no significant improvement in durability properties on increasing the percentage of OPC replacement. However, 30% of OPC replacement is found to be optimum for strength criteria.