Mechanical properties of sustainable reactive powder concrete made with low cement content and high amount of fly ash and silica fume

Abstract

Reactive powder concrete (RPC) is one of the distinctive kinds of concrete whose benefits are high mechanical performance and durability. It contains a high content of cement, which means a high amount of carbon dioxide emitted during manufacturing. Scientists have tended to search for a way to reduce environmental damage, and one solution is to partially replace cement with mineral admixtures, waste from other industries, or by-products. There are restricted studies involving the use of high content of compounding mineral admixtures in the making of RPC. Therefore, this research aims to produce sustainable RPC with a low cement content (50%). The main objective of this research is to study the impact of substituting cement with 50% of silica fume (SF) + fly ash (FA) on the mechanical characteristics of RPC. Three mixtures containing various percentages of SF + FA were poured, in addition to the reference mixture. Flowability, flexural and compressive strengths, ultrasonic pulse velocity (UPV), and density were examined. The results showed that a sustainable RPC can be produced by substituting the cement with 10% SF and 40% FA with an improvement in workability and compressive strength and an insignificant reduction in other properties.

Keywords

• fly ash
• mechanical properties
• reactive powder concrete
• silica fume
• sustainability