Study on effect of colloidal Nano silica blended concrete under compression

What is it about?

Cement is an essential raw material for the production of concrete. However, huge amounts of carbon-dioxide a greenhouse gas is emitted during the calcination of limestone for the production of one tonne of cement. Since, the production of cement involves excessive emission of greenhouse gases that lead to depletion of the ozone layer and many other environmental problems, a substitute or alternative material for cement is needed for sustainable construction. The pozzolanic materials like Silica Fume (SF), FA, Rice husk ash (RHA), Metakaolin, ALC, Ground Granulated Blast Furnace Slag (GGBS), etc are used as replacing material for cement reduces the CO2 emission and also improve various physical properties of the concrete. These materials are being used as a partial replacement of cement in the field of construction from the recent past to meet all the requirements and demands of construction industries. In the present investigation, the combination of FA and ALC materials are used in as a partial replacement of cement. Also, there are few investigations that deal with the usage of Nanotechnology in concrete. Recently nanotechnology received attention towards the usage of nanomaterials like nano silica (NS), nano metakoline (NMK), etc as additives in the concrete production. Among all the nanomaterials NS has been chosen as an additive because of its high capability in improving the microstructure of cement-based products like concrete [4]. However, there are only limited works which deal with the effects of NS on fresh state properties such as, setting time, consistency, workability and hardened properties such as mechanical and durability properties. Reusing industrial by-products such as FA, ALC and NS are very important in order to achieve sustainability in civil engineering construction.

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Why is it important?

Ternary Blended Concrete (TBC) with Nano-Silica (NS) is receiving special attention because of its ability to improve the performance of concrete as compared with the control concrete. The present investigation deals about the behavior of TBC produced, using Fly Ash (FA) and Alccofine (ALC) as a partial replacement for cement along with four different types of colloidal NS (CemSynXLP, CemSynXTX, CemSynXFX, CemSynXTXla) as additives. The compressive strength of M30 grade of TBC was tested after 7, 14 and 28 days of curing. From the study, it has been found that the TBC mix with 25% replacement for cement (FA at 15% and ALC at 10%) and with addition of 1% CemSynXTXla type of NS as an additive has achieved higher strength than all other types of TBC mixes.