Sustainable Concrete Solutions for Green Buildings: A Study on Nano-Silica and Dolomite Powder Integration
Gaurav THAKUR, Ajay SINGH, Arun Kumar AGARWAL, Jitender GAIROLLA, Shanoo SHARMA, Nighat SHAMEEM, Vineeta SINGH
Abstract. To meet the standards of sustainability and efficiency, the cement and concrete sector need positive development of concrete mix strength. The current study is about the interaction of a couple of dolomite powder and nano-silica cementitious additives on workability and compressive strength of concrete M30. The application of the L9 orthogonal array of the Taguchi method was done to obtain the optimal mix, where the nano-silica was tested at the levels of 2%, 3%, and 4% and the dolomite powder was used in the amounts of 15%, 20%, and 25% of cement’s weight with a standard water-cement ratio of 0.40. The findings revealed that there were different behaviors in terms of workability and mechanical strength. The greater the amount of nano-silica was used, the lower the workability was, but on the other hand, 25% of dolomite powder addition made the slump value 200 mm which was considered as an efficient filler for the flowability enhancement. The mechanical performance was evaluated based on the analysis of the Taguchi Signal-to-Noise (S/N) ratio wherein the compressive strength demonstrated a non-linear pattern of increase and reached its maximum at the 3% nano-silica level. The most effective combination was determined to be 3% nano-silica plus 20% dolomite powder, resulting in a mean compressive strength of 39.5 MPa at 28 days, which surpassed the M30-grade concrete target strength successfully. When the quantity of nano-silica was increased to more than 3%, the strength dropped a little bit and this was due to agglomeration of the nanoparticles. The results indicate that the harmonious combination of 3% nano-silica + 20% dolomite not only produces but also the sustainable concrete with the highest performance which is perfect for green building applications.
Keywords
L9 Orthogonal Array, Larger-the-Better Approach, Optimization, Signal-to-Noise Ratio (S/N), Taguchi’s Method
Published online 5/10/2026, 9 pages
Copyright © 2026 by the author(s)
Published under license by Materials Research Forum LLC., Millersville PA, USA
Citation: Gaurav THAKUR, Ajay SINGH, Arun Kumar AGARWAL, Jitender GAIROLLA, Shanoo SHARMA, Nighat SHAMEEM, Vineeta SINGH, Sustainable Concrete Solutions for Green Buildings: A Study on Nano-Silica and Dolomite Powder Integration, Materials Research Proceedings, Vol. 66, pp 239-247, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.21741/9781644904152-22
The article was published as article 22 of the book Advanced Materials and Sustainable Energy Technologies
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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