Mechanical properties and freeze-thaw resistance of lightweight aggregate concrete using artificial clay aggregate

Abstract

This work intends to make structural lightweight aggregate concrete by using artificial expanded clay aggregate with different replacement levels from normal coarse aggregate and improve it with a high-performance superplasticizer to increase its strength. The mechanical characteristics covered in the present work were compressive strength, flexural strength, and splitting tensile strength in addition to freezing and thawing resistance. Different densities were found for all mixes ranging between normal and lightweight concrete and that depends on the replacement of normal aggregate with lightweight aggregates. Mixes with replacement exceeding 25% give compressive strength less than 17 MPa and cannot be regarded as structural lightweight concrete. Modified mixes give higher values of mechanical properties, and also some non-structural lightweight concrete mixes were improved to structural lightweight concrete by using PC-superplasticizer in this study. The research also includes freezing and thawing cycles on reference mixes and lightweight mixes. Lightweight mixes give high durability against freeze-thaw cycles where the reduction in compressive strength was 6.2, 4.6, and 5.5% for 10% rep, 15% rep, and 20% rep mixes, respectively, compared with 32.2% reduction for reference mix.