Statistical modeling of physical and mechanical responses of roller-compacted sand concrete made with ternary sand using the experimental design method

Abstract

The rapid development of road infrastructure and the lack of gravel resources have pushed practitioners in the field to develop and propose new alternative materials for road construction. As these novel materials are essentially based on sand, an innovative technique, i.e. the roller-compacted sand concrete (RCSC) technique, has lately been developed. The present paper aims primarily to investigate the effects of the physical characteristics and the mineralogical nature of sand on the mechanical and physical behavior of the RCSC. For this purpose, it was deemed appropriate to choose the design-of-experiment (mixture design) modeling with three factors that are represented by three different types of sand, i.e. calcareous sand (CS), alluvial sand (AS), and desert sand (DS). In addition, it was decided to select the compressive and tensile strength, dynamic modulus of elasticity, and water absorption at 28 days, as responses. Next, a microstructural analysis was carried out using the scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) techniques.