Effects of sandstone slurry, the dosage of superplasticizer and water/binder ratio on the fresh properties and compressive strength of self-compacting concrete

Abstract

Abstract This paper comprises the results and discussion of an experimental investigation carried out to study the effect of sandstone slurry, the dosage of superplasticiser and water/binder ratio on the fresh properties and compressive strength of self-compacting concrete (SCC). Three water binder ratio 0.36, 0.34 and 0.32 were selected. For each water/binder ratio three superplasticiser dosage has been fixed. Sandstone slurry has replaced with cement at 0% and 35%. To study the effect on fresh property with different w/b ratio and SP dosage, slump flow test, T500, V-funnel, Sieve segregation and L-Box test and compressive strength test was conducted at 7,14, 28 days and results are reported. The result showed that up to 1.7% dosage of Superplasticizer increases the strength of concrete. Excess of SP dosage, compressive strength decreased. Fresh property criteria were also not in line. The inclusion of sandstone slurry by substitution to cement was found to be very beneficial to fresh self-compacting concrete. Results from the above studies were indicated that, the range of superplasticiser dosage might be fixed from 1.35% to 1.7% by weight of binder along with 0.34 water/binder ratio provides optimum strength with the acceptable range of fresh properties of SCC. Although, compressive strength decreased with 35% replacement of sandstone slurry content, for lower percentages of replacement of cement with sandstone slurry may perform better and continuing it in future work.