Workability and mechanical properties of alkali-activated fly ash-slag concrete cured at ambient temperature

Abstract

Alkali-activated fly ash-slag (AAFS) concrete is a new blended alkali-activated concrete that has been increasingly studied over the past decades because of its environmental benefits and superior engineering properties. However, there is still a lack of comprehensive studies on the effect of different factors on the fresh and hardened properties of AAFS concrete. This paper aims to provide a thorough understanding of workability and mechanical properties of AAFS concrete cured at ambient temperature and to obtain the optimal mixtures for engineering application. A series of experiments were carried out to measure workability, setting time, compressive strength, splitting tensile strength, flexural strength and dynamic elastic modulus of AAFS concrete. The results showed that workability and setting time decreased with the increase of slag content and molarity of sodium hydroxide solution (SH). Compressive strength increased with the increase of slag content and molarity of SH as well as the decrease of alkaline activator to binder (AL/B) ratio, but it did not have significant relationship with sodium silicate to sodium hydroxide (SS/SH) ratio. In addition, equations provided by ACI code, Eurocode and previous researchers for ordinary Portland cement concrete overestimated the values of splitting tensile strength, flexural strength and dynamic elastic modulus of AAFS concrete. The optimal mixtures of AAFS concrete were set as slag content of 20–30%, AL/B ratio of 0.4, 10 M of SH, and SS/SH ratio of 1.5–2.5 considering the performance criteria of workability, setting time and compressive strength.