STUDY OF THE EFFECT OF QUARTZ POWDER ON COMPRESSIVE STRENGTH IN ULTRA HIGH PERFORMANCE CONCRETE

Abstract

Concrete is the most predominantly used engineering material in construction industry because of its strength, durability and less cost when compared to other construction materials. During the past few years Ultra high performance concrete (UHPC) is one of the emerging high tech building material which exhibit excellent performance and generate economic benefit. UHPC varies from the traditional concrete due to no coarse aggregate present in it , contains only the fine materials like quartz powder, quartz sand, silica fume. The present study focuses on UHPC with compressive strength greater than 170Mpa by varying the percentage of quartz powder by the weight of cement.. To improve the micro structural properties of UHPC and to accelerate the pozzolanic reaction between silica fume and quartz powder thermal curing was done. Cube specimens of 70.6mm 70.6mm 70.6mm size were casted and at the age of third day exposed to a temperature of 200 in oven curing for a time period of 24, 48 and 72 hours followed with water curing up to 28 days. The percentage changing of quartz powder in UHPC results the compressive strength ranges from 140MPa to 175MPa . From these study it was observed that the variation of quartz powder and the time span of temperature curing affects the compressive strength. Finally, the compressive strength of UHPC with175MPa was achieved at 40% of quartz powder by the weight of cement was used with 48 hours thermally cured at 200◦c.