Strength and Durability Properties of Metakaolin Amalgamated High Performance Concrete

Abstract

In past three decades, it is inevitably for the development of high strength concrete (HSC) and high performance concrete (HPC) is progressively enhanced, since these concrete are widely used throughout the world in most prominent projects like oil, bridges, multi-storey buildings and nuclear industries etc. In meticulous, the amalgamation of supplementary cementing material (SCM) or pozzolanic materials is vital when high strength and durability become the most desired properties of HPC. Metakaolin (MK) is found to be superior than other SCMs like silica fume, slag and fly ash etc. Owing to its high pozzolanic activity, both strength and durability of concrete are augmented. Also, now a day the availability of natural sand which is the main constituent of concrete is becoming complicated because of its paucity. With the exploit of locally collected waste sand i.e., crusher wash sand (CWS) as an alternative for natural sand to produce HSC/HPC may solve the problem. This paper pact with the swot of principal characteristics such as workability, mechanical properties (i.e., compressive, tensile and flexural strength) and durability of HPC for a sole water/binder ratio of 0.3. M50 grade of HPC mix was used for this study with partial replacement of cement by MK at diverse percentage ranges between 5 and 15% i.e., with every increment of 2.5% and also with 100% replacement of natural sand by crusher wash sand. MK concrete test results are compared with the reference mix (RM) (i.e., Normal HPC concrete with 100% replacement of sand by CWS). From the test results, it was observed that up to 10% increment of MK level, the mechanical properties were increased and after that the mechanical properties were decreased, but it lingered higher than the reference mix. Predominantly it was scrutinized that, 10% replacement level was the optimum level in all aspects of investigation. HPC mixes have also indicated better resistance to the attacks of chemicals such as chlorides and sulphates when the HPC mixes were exposed for a period of 180 days.

Keywords: High performance concrete, metakaolin, crusher wash sand, pozzolanic

Cite this Article

Muthumari G, Niraikula Sekaran K. Strength and Durability Properties of Metakaolin Amalgamated High Performance Concrete. Recent Trends in Civil Engineering & Technology. 2017; 7(2): 36–44p.