Characterization of sustainable mortar containing high-quality recycled manufactured sand crushed from recycled coarse aggregate

Abstract

The current utilization of low-quality recycled fine aggregate sourced from concrete waste acting as river sand replacement cannot achieve the preparation required for high-quality recycled mortar, due to abundant existence of hardened old mortar in recycled fine aggregate. In this work, an innovative and viable approach is proposed to crush recycled coarse aggregate into recycled manufactured sand, which has high-quality properties similar to the manufactured sand crushed from natural stone, for preparing high-quality recycled mortar with high strength and good durability. The results showed that recycled manufactured sand constituted by large proportion of natural stone particles and small proportion of old mortar, owned higher apparent density and lower water absorption than recycled fine aggregate. Incorporating recycled fine aggregate increased the drying shrinkage and decreased the mechanical strength; however, the substitution of natural river sand by recycled manufactured sand in mortar decreased the drying shrinkage as a result of its irregular shape and coarse surface, meanwhile, first increased and then declined the mechanical strength following the increase of the replacing percentage, amongst which the mortar containing 50% recycled manufactured sand showed the best mechanical strength. The tested mortars with recycled manufactured sand showed a general increment in the water and chloride ingress yet exhibited the water absorption and chloride ingress much lower than the mortar with recycled fine aggregate. Particularly, decreasing the content of hardened old mortar in recycled manufactured sand further improved the properties of recycled mortar.