Effective Utilization of Industrial and Agricultural Waste for Developing Sustainable Self-Compacting Concrete

Abstract

SCC (Self compacting concrete) can fill formwork and encloses reinforcing bars under gravity and maintains homogeneity without vibration. SCC shortens the period of construction, guarantees compaction in confined zones, moreover terminates noise due to vibration. The wide spread application of SCC is restricted because of the high cost for the production of SCC with high cement content and chemical admixtures. In order to make the production of SCC economical, and to reduce the high cement content the Ordinary Portland Cement in SCC can be blended with pozzolanic materials like rice husk ash and supplementary cementitious materials like fly ash. In this paper the fresh state properties and mechanical properties such as compressive strength, split tensile strength and flexural strength of SCC with ternary blends of rice husk ash (RHA) and fly ash (FA) were studied. For this purpose, different mixes were prepared by replacing Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC) with 5%, 10%, 15% and 20% of rice husk ash (RHA) and the percentage of addition of fly ash (FA) is fixed as 15% for all these mixes. It was observed that the specimen incorporating 10% of rice husk ash (RHA) and 15% of fly ash (FA) as ternary blend exhibits better mechanical properties such as: Compressive, split tensile and flexural strengths at 28 days of age as compared to traditional mix of SCC without RHA (Rice Husk Ash) and FA (Fly Ash). This research demonstrates that the ideal percentage for a mixture of rice husk ash (RHA) and fly ash as ternary blend is 10% and 15% respectively.