Abstract
Manufactured sand differs from natural sea and river dredged sand in its physical and mineralogical properties. These can be both beneficial and detrimental to the fresh and hardened properties of concrete. This paper presents the results of a laboratory study in which manufactured sand produced in an industry sized crushing plant was characterised with respect to its physical and mineralogical properties. The influence of these characteristics on concrete workability and strength, when manufactured sand completely replaced natural sand in concrete, was investigated and modelled using artificial neural networks (ANN). The results show that the manufactured sand concrete made in this study generally requires a higher water/cement (w/c) ratio for workability equal to that of natural sand concrete due to the higher angularity of the manufactured sand particles. Water reducing admixtures can be used to compensate for this if the manufactured sand does not contain clay particles. At the same w/c ratio, the compressive and flexural strength of manufactured sand concrete exceeds that of natural sand concrete. ANN proved a valuable and reliable method of predicting concrete strength and workability based on the properties of the fine aggregate (FA) and the concrete mix composition.
Highlights
In many countries sources of natural sand for use as an aggregate in construction are becoming scarce as sand pits are exhausted and environmental legislation prevents dredging [1,2,3]
One possible source of construction aggregate is sand that has been manufactured from the surplus material that results when coarse aggregate is produced in hard rock quarries
The UK has significant reserves of crusher dust in its quarries, which could undergo further processing to provide the majority of the sand required by the construction industry, using the same sales and delivery channels as it does for its coarse aggregates
Summary
In many countries sources of natural sand for use as an aggregate in construction are becoming scarce as sand pits are exhausted and environmental legislation prevents dredging [1,2,3]. The UK has significant reserves of crusher dust in its quarries, which could undergo further processing to provide the majority of the sand required by the construction industry, using the same sales and delivery channels as it does for its coarse aggregates. The advantage of this being in the ability to specify aggregates from quarries close to their place of end-use, thereby shortening transport distances and minimising pollution. Compared to natural sand crusher dusts tend to have inferior shape and texture properties as well as poor grading and unfamiliar mineralogical compositions, all of which affect the properties of fresh and hardened concrete
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