Mechanical and durability properties of bagasse ash-blended high-performance concrete

Abstract

The use of supplementary cementitious materials has become an integral part of high-strength and high-performance concrete mix design, which may be natural by-products or industrial wastes. Some of the frequently used supplementary cementitious materials are fly ash, silica fume, ground granulated blast furnace slag, rice hush ash and bagasse ash (BA). BA (sugarcane industry waste product) is considered to be an active pozzolan because of its large surface area with significant amount of amorphous SiO2. The mix design for high-performance concrete is done as per the method proposed by P. C. Aitcin. This method is simple and follows the same approach as ACI 211-1 standard practice for selecting proportion of normal, heavy and mass concreting. Ordinary Portland cement was replaced at different levels of 0%, 5%, 10%, 15% and 20% by BA. This investigation presents results on the strength and durability properties of high-performance concrete with and without BA, which includes cube compressive strength, splitting tensile strength, flexural strength, saturated water absorption, sorptivity, porosity, impact test and alkalinity measurement. The test results indicate that the incorporation of BA up to 10% provides improved properties of hardened concrete.