Behavior of geopolymer concrete deep beams containing waste aggregate of glass and limestone as a partial replacement of natural sand

Abstract

The geopolymer concrete has outstanding physical properties and positive impact on environment compared to conventional concrete. Present endeavor highlights a strategy for management of glass and limestone waste to recycle them in geopolymer concrete deep beams. In this study, 126 geopolymer concrete samples were made for investigating the mechanical properties of geopolymer concrete with the sand replacement ratio of 0–15% by weight in increments of 5%. In addition, seven Reinforced geopolymer concrete deep beams of 600,150,150 mm were casted with respect to the concrete mix and their performance was examined in four-point bending test as per ASTM C78/C78M considering sand replacing ratio of 0–15%. Moreover, proper material constitutive relationships were selected to simulate the performance of geopolymer concrete incorporating waste aggregate. Consequently, a nonlinear finite element solution in ANSYS 11.0 was developed using these constitutive models to predict the behavior of beams. Experimental observations revealed that the use of waste lime and waste glass aggregates reduced the compressive and tensile strength of geopolymer concrete. Furthermore, the loss in strength using waste glass aggregate was less than 15% when compared to geopolymer concrete with waste limestone. Whereas, 5–15% sand replacing with waste aggregate resulted in an average reduction of 19% in loading capacity of the deep beams. The degradation in the ultimate load of the beams with limestone aggregate was 46.6% lower than that for members containing waste glass aggregate. The strain energy of the deep beams containing waste limestone was enhanced by increasing the waste aggregate content from 5% to 15%. Whilst increasing the ratio of replacement for glass mixes led to a decrease in final compressive strain. The outputs of the numerical analysis, in terms of loading capacity of the geopolymer concrete deep beams, were in good matching with the experimental results.