OPTIMISATION OF CONCRETE INCORPORATING PARTIAL REPLACEMENT OF CEMENT BY GGBFS AND NATURAL SAND BY GBF SLAG SAND

Abstract

Since the past decade, sustainable and eco-friendly living has been a topic of concern to people from all walks of life. However, not much effort has been made towards putting an effective solution on ground for the fast depleting river beds despite the fact that sand plays a very vital role in the construction industry. Also global warming caused due to the emission of CO2 during the hydration process of cement concrete caused a main concern. Further, this paper re-affirms the scope for use of industrial by-products in the manufacture of concrete in all possible aspects including practicability, economic feasibility and ecological benefits. GGBFS (Ground Granulated Blast Furnace Slag) and GBF Slag Sand is one such waste product of the iron manufacturing industry, whose use
and production has increased many folds during last decades is used in this experimental work as alternative binder and filler materials for Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC) and River Sand respectively in concrete. M40 grades of concrete was considered for a water content (w/c) 0.4 and slag sand replaced by 40%,50%&60% with river sand and GGBFS replacements of 30%, 40%, 50% with cement to investigate the properties of compressive strength, split tensile strength, flexural strength of concrete mix. And also optimization of concrete has been checked to get the required target mean strength. The optimum strength of concrete was obtained for the mix having 40% GGBS and 50% Slag sand (58.41 N/mm2 ).