Effects of fiber addition on performance of high-performance alkali activated slag concrete mixes: An experimental evaluation

Abstract

There is an ever-increasing awareness on issues connected with emission of high amounts of greenhouse gases from various industries, including that from the concrete construction industry. Performances of alternative binder systems including geopolymers and alkali activated slag concretes are being investigated in this context. There is again a continuous drive to enhance their performances, both when green and on getting hardened and so also, simultaneous efforts are being made to take advantage of all the various fast-track, state-of-art construction technologies, leading to efficient, eco-friendly and economical infrastructure projects. The present authors have developed and evaluated a new set of such alkali activated slag concrete mixes having self-compacting property, along with higher mechanical properties (hereafter referred to as HPAASC mixes) using three industrial by-products, all obtained from iron and steel industry. While these HPAASC mixes have higher compressive strengths (in the range of 70–90 MPa), reasonable split and flexural strengths and are self-compacting, they continue to be brittle just as other high strength concrete mixes. In order to improve their cracking behaviour during failure, either under mechanical loads or on exposure to higher temperatures, addition of increasing amounts of steel fibers in HPAASC mixes is contemplated. Hence in the present study, the attempt is to study the effect of incorporation of fibers (within a small range of 0.4 − 0.8%) in the new class of high-performance, fibre reinforced. Self-compacting alkali-activated slag concrete mixes – (referred to as HFSASC hereafter). The present study evaluates the properties such as flow ability, compressive strength and flexural toughness performances for these mixes. Results in the present study indicate that, while all the HFSASC mixes exhibit satisfactory passing and flowing abilities specified as per EFNARC standards for self-compacting mixes, they exhibit enhanced toughness characteristics too.