AN INVESTIGATION ON THE PROPERTIES OF GEOPOLYMER LIGHT WEIGHT CONCRETE

The large-scale production of cement is posing environmental problems on one hand and unrestricted depletion of natural resources, on the other hand causing greenhouse effect and global warming. Each ton of Portland cement production results in loading about one ton of CO2 in to the environment. Environmental and economic reasons require the vision of present concrete making materials. Fortunately in such scenario a new material has emerged that can help in mitigating the problem and the material is Geopolymer Concrete. Hence, the present research work is focused on the production of geopolymer concrete using pozzolans. Geopolymer concrete donot use cement in its productive. Materials like fly ash, ground granulated blast furnace slag (GGBS), silica fume, etc may be used as pozzolanes. The parameters influencing strength of GPC are total combined aggregate, alkaline to binder ratio, mass of sodium silicate to sodium hydroxide, molarity of sodium hydroxide and curing conditions. The main objective of this experimental investigation is to produce geopolymer concrete using industrial wastes such as fly ash to reduce the global warming effect. The industrial waste foundry slag is used as partial replacement with coarse aggregate in various percentages such as 0%, 20%, 40%, 60%, 80% and 100% by weight. Specimens are prepared with 13 molarity, with alkaline to binder ratio as 0.35 and with mass of Na2SiO3 to NaOH as 2.0. The specimens are kept for ambient curing for required days. The workability tests such as slump test, vee-bee test and compaction factor test are conducted. The mechanical properties are studied by testing for compressive strength, tensile strength and flexural strength. Durability properties like water absorption, sorpitivity tests are carried out. The test results showed the ability of producing light weight geopolymer concrete with acceptable performance of strength and durability properties.