A Study on the Flexural Behaviour of Geopolymer Lightweight Eco‐Friendly Concrete Using Coconut Shell as Coarse Aggregate

Abstract

This paper presents the flexural behaviour of concrete containing ground granulated blast furnace slag (GGBS) as a binder, manufactured sand (M-sand) as a fine aggregate, and coconut shell (CS) and crushed stone aggregate (CSA) as coarse aggregates. Alkaline activator sodium hydroxide with 10 molarity and sodium silicate were used in a weighing proportion of 1 : 2.5 to produce structural grade concrete. Out of 12 beams cast, 6 were used to study geopolymer coconut shell concrete (GPCSC) beam behaviour and 6 were used to study geopolymer conventional concrete (GPCC) beam behaviour. Data presented include cracking behaviour, ultimate moment capacitates, deflection behaviour, ductility ratio, and end rotation of the beam. Laboratory investigations show encouraging results, and it can be summarized that coconut shell has good potential as a coarse aggregate for the production of structural grade geopolymer lightweight coconut shell concrete.

Compressive stress–strain model for the estimation of the flexural capacity of reinforced geopolymer concrete members

“…The proposed stress-strain relation was derived by utilizing the experimental findings of bending tests of several specimens, but its accuracy should be tested using other experiments from the literature. To this end, 36 different tests from recent studies 13,14,44,[46][47][48][49][50][51][52] were utilized (Tables 3 and 4). It could easily be inferred that the used test database has a very large range of compressive strength, tensile reinforcement ratio, compressive reinforcement ratio, section sizes, and so forth.…”

Performance and applications of lightweight geopolymer and alkali activated composites with incorporation of ceramic, polymeric and lignocellulosic wastes as aggregates: A review

“…3 Morphology of lignocellulosic LWA: a. Uncrushed OPS; b. Crushed OPS [ 76 ]; c. POC fragment taken from the factory, d. POC coarse aggregate, e. POC fine aggregate [ 77 ]; f. coconut shell [ 78 ]; g. fine sawdust; h. coarse sawdust [ 79 ]; i. spent coffee ground [ 80 ]; j. expanded cork granules [ 23 ]. …”