Strength and microstructure behaviour of high calcium fly ash based sustainable geo polymer concrete

Abstract

Purpose Concrete is a building material widely used for the infrastructural development. Cement is the binding material used for the development of concrete. It is the primary cause of CO2 emission globally. The purpose of this study is to develop sustainable concrete material to satisfy the present need of construction sector. Geopolymer concrete (GPC) is a sustainable concrete developed without the use of cement. Therefore, investigations are being conducted to replace the cement by 100% with high calcium fly ash (FA) as binding material. Design/methodology/approach High calcium FA is used as cementitious binder, sodium hydroxide (NaOH) and sodium silicates (Na2SiO3) are used as alkaline liquids for developing the GPC. Mix proportions with different NaOH molarities of 4, 6, 8 and 10 M are considered to attain the appropriate mix. The method of curing adopted is ambient and oven curing. Workability, compressive strength and microstructure characteristics of GPC are analysed and presented. Findings An increase of NaOH in the mix decreases the workability. Compressive strength of 29 MPa is obtained for Mix-I with 8 M under ambient curing. A polynomial relationship is obtained to predict the compressive strength of GPC. Scanning electron microscope analysis is used to confirm the geo-polymerisation process in the microstructure of concrete. Originality/value This research work focuses on finding some alternative cementitious material for concrete that can replace ordinary portland cement (OPC) to overcome the CO2 emission owing to the utilisation of cement in the construction industry. An attempt has been made to use the waste material (high calcium FA) from thermal power plant for the production of GPC. GPC concrete is the novel building material and alternative to conventional concrete. It is the ecofriendly product contributing towards the improvement of the circular economy in the construction industry. There are several factors that affect the property of GPC such as type of binder material, molarity of activator solution and curing condition. The novelty of this work lies in the approach of using locally available high calcium FA along with manufactured sand for the development of GPC. As this approach is rarely investigated, to prove the attainment of compressive strength of GPC with high calcium FA, an attempt has been made during the present investigation. Other influencing parameter which affects the strength gain has also been analysed in this paper.

Post-fire investigation on the mechanical properties and physical characteristics of fibre-reinforced geopolymer concrete

“…In addition, the concentration of NaOH needs to be considered as it greatly impacts the mechanical properties of the GC (Prasad et al. , 2021a, b). The CS of 8 M and 10 M at 28 days of ambient curing is shown in Figure 6.…”

“…This resulted in increased CS due to a more hydrated process, leading to increased gels, such as C-S-H, N-A-S-H and C-S-(A)-H (Prasad et al. , 2021a,b). The N-A-S-H and C-S-(A)-H gels are shown in Figure 7.…”

“…, 2010; Prasad et al. , 2021a, b). This type of element, such as O, Si, Na, Al and Ca, is observed in the present EDAX analysis, as illustrated in Figure 19.…”

“…This geo-polymerisation is not occurring in the ambient curing process (Prasad et al. , 2021a,b). This type of concrete is not suitable for in-site application.…”

Machine-Learning-Algorithm to predict the High-Performance concrete compressive strength using multiple data

“…Ensemble ML uses multiple learning algorithm to obtain better predictive performance as compared to any constituent learning algorithm alone. Therefore, individual and ensemble ML techniques have been compared in this study to identify the superlative model for predicting the hardened properties of concrete (Chou and Pham, 2013;Pouriyeh et al, 2017;Salami et al, 2021;Tantri et al, 2021aTantri et al, , 2021bTantri et al, , 2021cPrayuda et al, 2020;Prasad et al, 2021).…”