Mechanical and Microstructural Properties of Ordinary Concrete with High Additions of Crushed Glass.

Cherif Belebchouche,Abdelkader Hammoudi,Slawomir Czarnecki,Karim Moussaceb,Abdelkarim Aït-Mokhtar,Abdelkarim Aït-Mokhtar,Abdelkarim Aït-Mokhtar,Salah-Eddine Bensebti

doi:10.3390/ma14081872

Abstract

This study investigates the use of crushed glass waste as partial cement replacement in ordinary concretes. Six concrete mixes were designed and prepared: a reference without substitution and five substitution percentages of crushed glass waste ranging from 5% to 25%. The made concrete mix design underwent different tests, namely: slump test, mechanical strength, thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), X-ray diffraction (XRD), Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) determination and finally, water porosimetry, in order to evaluate the influence of the use of crushed glass waste on the properties of fresh and hardened concrete. Mechanical strengths results show that the use of 15% of the crushed glass waste improves the mechanical strength. TGA analysis confirms this result by highlighting a higher hydration degree. The latter contributes to the reduction of the porosity and, consequently, the mechanical strength increases. Also, it can be caused by the increasing amount of chromium which, if added a little, accelerates the hydration of C3S and leads to an increase of the mechanical strength. The BET technique and porosimetry tests showed that the use of crushed glass waste reduces the global porosity of concrete. This is due to the filling effect of the glass powder.

Highlights

The cement industry is one of the most polluting sectors with a contribution of nearly7% of global CO2 emissions [1,2]
The evolution of the measured slumps is due to the increase in amount of glass in the mixture consumes a part of water due to its high specific surface determined by BET theory, which is in the order of 4530 cm2 /g, compared to that of cement (3310 cm2 /g) and leads to low slumps
Presented in this article the laboratory tests proved that there is possible to obtain a mixture by incorporating the waste glass powder into the concrete, which has positive effect in terms of physico-mechanical properties

Summary

Introduction

7% of global CO2 emissions [1,2]. This poses a threat to human health and the environment. The use of additions as a partial replacement for cement seems to be an effective technique to reduce its environmental impact [5,6,7,8,9]. It reduces costs, preserves natural resources, saves energy and reduces the volume of waste [10,11,12]. In Algeria, almost 170,000 tons/year of glass are thrown in the environment, knowing that a glass bottle takes at least 4000 years to be degraded [21,22]

Methods

Results

Conclusion