Effect of steel fibres on the mechanical strengths of fly ash/GGBS based geopolymer concrete under ambient curing condition

Effect of steel fibres on the mechanical strengths of fly ash/GGBS based geopolymer concrete under ambient curing condition

Musa Adamu, Tejas D Doshi, Veerendrakumar C. Khed, Yasser E. Ibrahim

Abstract. The production of concrete involves the use of huge quantity of cement which is the main binder material. However, cement production involves the use of high amount of embodied energy and reduce of embodied CO2 emission. Hence one of the alternatives is the use of concrete with zero cement called geopolymer. However, the main shortcoming of geopolymer is its higher brittleness and low modulus of elasticity compared to conventional cement concrete. This led to the addition of fibres to geopolymer. In this study, the effect of steel fibres addition on the mechanical strengths of ambient cured geopolymer concrete was investigated. 60% Fly ash class F and 40% GGBFS are used as binder materials to produce ambient geopolymer concrete of grade 30 MPa, which was activated by alkaline solution (mixture of sodium Hydroxide and sodium silicate) with a constant Molarity of Sodium Hydroxide as 10M without any cement. End hooked steel fibres of aspect ratio 35, were added to the geopolymer at 0%, 0.25% and 0.5% by volume fraction. The results findings showed that the workability of the geopolymer decreased with increase in addition of steel fibres. Ambient cured specimens yield good results and higher strength is observed due to high polymerization process. Furthermore, the compressive, split tensile and flexural strengths all improved significantly with increase in percentage of volume of steel fibres at any ambient curing period.

Keywords
Geopolymer Concrete, Fly Ash, Ground Granulated Blast Furnace Slag, Steel Fiber, Mechanical Strengths

Published online 8/10/2023, 10 pages
Copyright © 2023 by the author(s)
Published under license by Materials Research Forum LLC., Millersville PA, USA

Citation: Musa Adamu, Tejas D Doshi, Veerendrakumar C. Khed, Yasser E. Ibrahim, Effect of steel fibres on the mechanical strengths of fly ash/GGBS based geopolymer concrete under ambient curing condition, Materials Research Proceedings, Vol. 31, pp 398-407, 2023

DOI: https://doi.org/10.21741/9781644902592-41

The article was published as article 41 of the book Advanced Topics in Mechanics of Materials, Structures and Construction

Content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI.

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