Influence of alccofine incorporation on the mechanical behavior of ultra-high performance concrete (UHPC)

Abstract

The present paper explores the influence of alccofine on the mechanical properties of ultra-high performance concrete. In this study, UHPC is designed as a ternary blend including two types of filler materials namely quartz powder and ground granulated blast furnace slag in combination with alccofine and silica fume separately. An attempt has also been made to reduce the binder quantity by incorporating 6 mm coarse aggregates in to the UHPC mix. A total of 6 UHPC mixtures were designed and studied for their mechanical strength properties such as compressive, split-tensile, flexural strengths and modulus of elasticity at the ages of 7, 28 and 90 days. The experimental results indicated that UHPC mixes blended with alccofine yielded better mechanical performance in comparison to the traditional UHPC. The UHPC mix with cement, alccofine and GGBS as filling powder has yielded maximum strength values of 144.87 MPa, 15.8 MPa and 33.79 MPa for compressive, split-tensile and flexural strengths at 90 days under normal curing conditions. The introduction of coarse aggregates in UHPC has resulted in the overall reduction of mechanical performance of the concrete. Also a statistical tool based on response surface method was used for data analysis to predict compressive strength values from a regression equation and compare them with experimental results to check the validity of obtained experimental values. Based on the findings it can be assumed that alccofine has a possible suitability to act as a supplementary cement material in UHPC.