Early age properties of low-calcium fly ash geopolymer concrete suitable for ambient curing

Geopolymer is a promising alternative binder to Portland cement. It is produced mostly from by-product materials such as fly ash and blast furnace slag; hence recognised as a low-emission alternative binder for concrete. Recent studies have shown that the properties of geopolymers are similar or sup...

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Main Authors: Nath, Pradip, Sarker, Prabir, Rangan, B. Vijaya
Format: Journal Article
Published: Elsevier BV 2015
Subjects:
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/16339
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author Nath, Pradip
Sarker, Prabir
Rangan, B. Vijaya
author_facet Nath, Pradip
Sarker, Prabir
Rangan, B. Vijaya
author_sort Nath, Pradip
building Curtin Institutional Repository
collection Online Access
description Geopolymer is a promising alternative binder to Portland cement. It is produced mostly from by-product materials such as fly ash and blast furnace slag; hence recognised as a low-emission alternative binder for concrete. Recent studies have shown that the properties of geopolymers are similar or superior to those of the OPC binder that is traditionally used for concrete. Most of the previous studies employed heat curing for setting and hardening of fly ash geopolymer mixtures. Heat curing process requires special arrangements which is energy-consuming and may not be feasible to apply in cast-in-situ concreting. Therefore, development of geopolymer mixtures suitable for curing at normal temperature will widen its application. This paper presents a study on low calcium fly ash based geopolymer concrete cured in ambient temperature (23oC) without additional heat. Small amount of additives were added with fly ash to accelerate the early-age reaction. Setting times of geopolymer pastes, and workability and compressive strength of geopolymer mortar were studied. The effects of the additives and binder content in the mixtures were determined from experimental results. The results show that inclusion of additives with fly ash significantly enhanced the early age properties. Setting time reduced to reasonable values and compressive strength increased to enable early de-moulding of specimens. Compressive strength increased with the increase of binder content. However, workability results showed an optimum binder content for the fly ash geopolymer blended with the additives. The results suggest that suitable geopolymer mixtures can be designed for ambient curing with low calcium fly ash and the additives as partial replacement.
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institution Curtin University Malaysia
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publishDate 2015
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spelling curtin-20.500.11937-163392019-05-02T08:11:28Z Early age properties of low-calcium fly ash geopolymer concrete suitable for ambient curing Nath, Pradip Sarker, Prabir Rangan, B. Vijaya Workability Fly ash Setting time Ambient curing Geopolymer Geopolymer is a promising alternative binder to Portland cement. It is produced mostly from by-product materials such as fly ash and blast furnace slag; hence recognised as a low-emission alternative binder for concrete. Recent studies have shown that the properties of geopolymers are similar or superior to those of the OPC binder that is traditionally used for concrete. Most of the previous studies employed heat curing for setting and hardening of fly ash geopolymer mixtures. Heat curing process requires special arrangements which is energy-consuming and may not be feasible to apply in cast-in-situ concreting. Therefore, development of geopolymer mixtures suitable for curing at normal temperature will widen its application. This paper presents a study on low calcium fly ash based geopolymer concrete cured in ambient temperature (23oC) without additional heat. Small amount of additives were added with fly ash to accelerate the early-age reaction. Setting times of geopolymer pastes, and workability and compressive strength of geopolymer mortar were studied. The effects of the additives and binder content in the mixtures were determined from experimental results. The results show that inclusion of additives with fly ash significantly enhanced the early age properties. Setting time reduced to reasonable values and compressive strength increased to enable early de-moulding of specimens. Compressive strength increased with the increase of binder content. However, workability results showed an optimum binder content for the fly ash geopolymer blended with the additives. The results suggest that suitable geopolymer mixtures can be designed for ambient curing with low calcium fly ash and the additives as partial replacement. 2015 Journal Article http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/16339 10.1016/j.proeng.2015.11.077 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ Elsevier BV fulltext
spellingShingle Workability
Fly ash
Setting time
Ambient curing
Geopolymer
Nath, Pradip
Sarker, Prabir
Rangan, B. Vijaya
Early age properties of low-calcium fly ash geopolymer concrete suitable for ambient curing
title Early age properties of low-calcium fly ash geopolymer concrete suitable for ambient curing
title_full Early age properties of low-calcium fly ash geopolymer concrete suitable for ambient curing
title_fullStr Early age properties of low-calcium fly ash geopolymer concrete suitable for ambient curing
title_full_unstemmed Early age properties of low-calcium fly ash geopolymer concrete suitable for ambient curing
title_short Early age properties of low-calcium fly ash geopolymer concrete suitable for ambient curing
title_sort early age properties of low-calcium fly ash geopolymer concrete suitable for ambient curing
topic Workability
Fly ash
Setting time
Ambient curing
Geopolymer
url http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/16339