Evaluating the settlement of lightweight coarse aggregate in self-compacting lightweight concrete

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the settlement of lightweight coarse aggregate of self-compacting lightweight concrete (SCLC) after placement of concrete on its final position. To investigate this issue, sixteen samples of concrete mixes were made. The water to cementitious materials ratios of the mixes were 0.35 and 0.4. In addition to the workability tests of self-compacting concrete (SCC) such as slump flow, V-funnel and L-box tests, a laboratory experiment was made to examine the segregation of lightweight coarse aggregate in concrete. Because of the difficulties of this test, the image processing technique of MATLAB software was used to check the segregation above too. Moreover, the fuzzy logic technique of MATLAB software was utilized to improve the clarity of the borders between the coarse aggregate and the paste of the mixtures. At the end, the results of segregation tests and software analyses are given and the accuracy of the software analyses is evaluated. It is worth noting that the minimum and maximum differences between the results of laboratory tests and software analyses were 1.2% and 9.19% respectively. It means, the results of image processing technique looks exact enough for estimating the segregation of lightweight coarse aggregate in SCLC.