Flexural behaviour of steel fibre reinforced geopolymer concrete beams

Abstract

Concrete is the most versatile construction material. It is made up of different constituent materials such as Portland cement, fine aggregate, coarse aggregate, and water. In addition to this, some of the mineral admixtures were also added to the concrete to improve the performance of it. The amount of manufacturing of Portland cement has been increased in higher rate by every year due to the massive demands of the construction industry. Even though, this enormous production of Portland cement is considerably internal energy intensive and causes the global warming due to the emission of CO2 to the atmosphere. In other hand, a considerable amount of industrial byproducts is dumped as waste material in the land and water. The efforts are being made to make eco-friendly concrete. Both the above two problems are to be rectified. Worldwide, extensive researches were carried out with the various alternates for cement concrete, and best choice of an alternate material to this has been found as the Geopolymer concrete. An attempt in this regard is the production of geopolymer concrete, synthesized from the geological origin materials and by-products of industrial wastes such as fly ash and GGBS which is rich in alumina and silica. The main intention of the research involving geopolymer concrete was aimed at describing the mechanical properties of geopolymer concrete. Most of these studies are limited to geopolymer concrete cured at steam or elevated temperature. The feasibility of using geopolymer concrete in practical applications is affected because of these curing methods. Hence this study is focused on the curing of geopolymer concrete in ambient temperature to be used in the cast in situ applications in construction industry. newline