Experimental and analytical study on flexural behaviour of fly ash and paper sludge ash based geopolymer concrete

Abstract

This article presents the flexural behaviour of reinforced fly ash (FA)-based geopolymer concrete (GPC) beams with partial replacement of FA for about 10% by weight with paper sludge ash (PSA). The beams were made of M35 grade concrete and cured under three curing conditions for comparison viz., ambient curing, external exposure curing, and oven curing at 60oC. The beams were experimentally tested at the 28th day of casting after curing by conducting two-point loading flexural test. Performance aspects such as load carrying capacity, first crack load, load-deflection and moment–curvature behaviours of both types of beams were experimentally studied and their results were compared under different curing conditions. To verify the response of reinforced GPC beams numerically, an ANSYS 13.0 finite element program was also used. The result shows that there is a good agreement between computer model failure behaviour with the experimental failure behaviour.