Utilization of waste glass powder and waste glass sand in the production of Eco-Friendly concrete

Abstract

The primary objective of this paper is to study the combined influence of waste glass powder and waste glass sand as a partial replacement to cement and sand respectively in an attempt to produce eco-friendly concrete. Cement concrete mixtures, with waste glass powder contents varying from 5 % to 25 %, as cement replacement with 5 % incremental steps and the glass sand contents varying from 10 % to 50 % as fine aggregate replacement with 10 % incremental steps, were being experimented during the present study. The impact of waste glass powder on the setting time of cement was evaluated. Workability was investigated in terms of slump and flow percentage for concretes with all the above combinations of waste glass powder and waste glass sand. Compressive and split tensile strengths were found at the end of 7 and 28 days of curing for all the concrete mixtures. Durability tests viz., water absorption and rapid chloride penetration were also conducted on all modified cement concrete mixtures. Mixtures with 5 % glass powder and 10 % glass sand combination were found to be optimum with respect to both strength and durability properties. The use of waste glass had resulted in reduced the water absorption along with chloride ion penetration, thus proving to be highly advantageous. Micro structural investigations like FESEM and EDX analysis were also performed on the modified samples to observe the morphological and elemental changes, happening due to the concrete modification. Through this research study, a novel and an eco-friendly concrete with improved performance was proposed with an optimised combination of the waste glass powder and waste glass sand as cement and fine aggregate replacements respectively.