Performance Evaluation of River Sand & Manufactured Sand in Sun Heat Cured Fiber Reinforced Fly ash - Slag Based Geopolymer Concrete with Varied Percentage of Total Aggregates

Abstract

With the ever-increasing demand on Ordinary Portland Cement the environmental impact is forcing the construction industry to develop alternate concrete using available industrial waste outputs and nourish it to be a robust & competitive material to replace OPC based concrete. The alkali activated low calcium fly ash & slag-based concretes are a better bet as they develop desired strength under self-curing system and still a better strength is seen under sun heat curing system. As all cement based structural constructions progress daily under sun heat for a minimum period of 6 to 8 hours for a temperature ranging from 30 to 45 degrees Celsius, then and therefore the natural sun heat curing system of GPC assumes significant importance. With sun heat curing system, the geopolymer concretes are being popularized in the most consumed sector of concrete construction industry. As concrete gets its strength primarily from parent rock i.e., coarse and fine aggregates, their quantity variation has major relation with the performance of finished concrete. Two sets of tests are conducted, one for 100% River Sand and other for 100% Manufactured Sand and tested under Sun heat and Room Temperatures curing system. The specimen are manufactured using fly ash & slag with varying total aggregate percentages from 60% to 80%. Primary structural properties like unconfined compressive strength and split tensile strengths which have a direct & proportionate influence on other structural parameters are considered for detailed study. And the results are highly encouraging and satisfactory.