Compressive and flexural strength of recycled reactive powder concrete containing finely dispersed local wastes

Abstract

The main objective of this experimental study is to investigate the behavior of Recycled Reactive Powder Concrete (RRPC) developed from finely dispersed local waste raw materials. In this study, RRPC was developed by utilizing local wastes (finely dispersed waste glass powder, waste fly ash and waste ceramic powder) together with Portland cement, fine sand, admixture, steel fibers and water through full replacement of silica fume as well as quartz powder for sustainable construction practice. In this study, all raw materials for making RRPC were analyzed for X-Ray Fluorescence analysis. For sustainability of local construction works, this study employed standard curing method at am- bient temperatures instead of steam curing at higher temperatures. Moreover,, hand mixing was used throughout the study. To evaluate the structural per- formances of the developed RRPC mixes, compressive and flexural strengths of RRPC were investigated experimentally and compared with the control mix. The experimental results indicated that replacing the silica fume fully by finely dispersed local waste glass powder (GP) and fly ash (FA) is a promising approach for local structural construction applications. Accordingly, a mean compressive strength of 62.9 MPa and flexural strength of 8.8 MPa were de- veloped using 50% GP-50% FA at 28 th days standard curing. In this study, 17.56% larger compressive strength and 30.6% flexural strength improve- ments were observed as compared to the control mix.