Effect of curing condition on strength of geopolymer concrete

Abstract

Increasing emphasis on energy conservation and environmental protection has led to the investigation of the alternatives to customary building materials. Some of the significant goals behind understaking such investigations are to reduce the greenhouse gasemissions and minimize the energy required formaterial production.The usage of concrete around the world is second only to water. Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC) is conventionally used as the primary binder to produce concrete. The cement production is a significant industrial activity in terms of its volume and contribution to greenhouse gas emission. Globally, the production of cement contributes at least 5 to 7 % of CO 2. Another major problem of the environment is to dispose off the fly ash, a hazardous waste material, which is produced by thermal power plant by combustion of coal in power generation processes. The geopolymer concrete aims at utilizing the maximum amount of fly ash and reduce CO 2 emission in atmosphere by avoiding use of cement to making concrete. This paper reports an experimental work conducted to investigate the effect of curing conditions on the compressive strength of geopolymer concrete prepared by using fly ash as base material and combination of sodium hydroxide and sodium silicate as alkaline activator.

Compressive Strength of Geopolymer Concrete: Influence of Size of Gravel

“…Consequently, the increase in temperature results in increase in the rate of strength development. This result has been observed by several researchers [10][11][12] in which the compressive strength of fly-ash based specimen cured at higher temperature demonstrated higher value than when it is cured in an ambient condition. 6 displays the failure observed for geo-polymer concrete when it is subjective to compressive loading.…”

Methods of curing geopolymer concrete: A review

“…High early compressive strength development was noticed in a specimens cured in oven. Similarly, Patil et al (2014) examined the influence of mode of curing on the mechanical properties of geopolymer concrete, in their work fly ash was activated by a solution of sodium hydroxide and sodium silicate. The results showed that 7 days strength of the oven cured specimen is almost six times than that of ambient cured specimens while at 28 days curing period, the strength increment was doubled.…”

Compressive Behavior of Concrete under Environmental Effects

“…The durability of the concrete against freeze-thaw cycles is previously investigated as a major factor indicating the ability for resistance against weathering actions [9][10][11]. For durability improvements, the concrete mixture's water-tocement ratio plays an important role which should be carefully considered [12,13]. ACI guide [1] proposes procedures prior and after pouring concrete under harsh weather conditions to avoid any strength loss (Figure 1).…”