Behaviour of ground cupola furnace slag blended concrete at elevated temperature

Abstract

Fires adversely affect the performance of concrete when expose to extreme temperatures. However, it is important to study the effects of elevated temperature on the concrete properties. Concrete often contains other cementitious materials such as ground granulated blast furnace slag (GGBFS) and this has been successfully used to improve its properties. Hence, little or no study has been carried out on the use of ground cupola furnace slag (GCFS) in concreting. Therefore, this paper investigates the behavior of concrete blended with GCFS at elevated temperatures. A total of 300 samples were prepared with four different GCFS contents. The test specimens were cured for 28-d and 56-d and subjected to elevated temperatures ranging from 200oC to 800oC up to 24 h. The slump, residual compressive and tensile strength tests were carried out on fresh and hardened concrete. The results showed that the compressive strength and splitting tensile strengths of concrete generally increased with increasing % GCFS content but decreased as temperature increases. At 28-d and 56-d, the strengths were observed to be maximum at 10% replacement when the temperature is 200oC compared to other mixes. It can be concluded that the strength drastically decreased at temperature above 200oC. An analysis of variance (ANOVA) was also carried out to determine the effect of the elevated temperature and percentage replacement of cement with GCFS on the 28-d and 56-d compressive strength of concrete. The results showed that temperature and % GCFS content had a statistically significant effect on the concrete performance. Based on Tukey’s honestly significant difference (HSD), the effect of GCFS was found to be statistically non-significant for 4% and 6% GCFS content at 28-d; and 2% and 4% GCFS content at 56-d. The effect of temperature was also found to be statistically non-significant for 600oC and 800oC at 28-d; and 27oC and 600oC; 200oC and 400oC at 56-d.

Keywords

• cupola slag, fire resistance, elevated temperature, anova