Mechanical and Economical Optimization of High-Strength Concrete Containing Zeolite and Nanosilica

Abstract

Between various sectors of civil engineering, concrete is one of the most widely used materials in the building industry. The use of pozzolanic materials is one of the solutions for high strength concrete production. High-strength concretes have high compressive strength, high adhesion, very low w/c ratio and permeability and therefore high durability. In this study, zeolite and nanosilica were used as natural and synthetic pozzolans. At first, concrete samples with 20 mixing designs (included water, cement, fine and coarse aggregates, zeolite, nanosilica and super-plasticizer) were designed to achieve the optimal design, and then tests of compressive strength and permeability of high-strength concrete were carried out. In the final step, the values of the mixing plan with the compressive strength results are used as inputs of the neural network. Then, the proposed relationship is optimized using the optimization algorithm from an economic perspective (optimal component value). The addition of zeolite and nanosilica to concrete not only increases resistance, but also decreases the permeability of samples, especially in the long term respect to pilot samples. According to the optimization results, it is observed that cement and nanosilica content has been reduced due to the high cost of production, but increased on zeolite values.

Keywords

• high-strength concrete
• artificial neural network
• genetic algorithm
• zeolite
• nanosilica