Fresh and Hardened Characteristics of Sustainable Self-Compacting High Performance Concrete Incorporating Silica Fume

Abstract

This paper mainly presents the producing of self-compacting high performance concrete (SCHPC) incorporating silica fume (SF) as a supplementary cementing material. Various percentages of replacement by weight of cement were tried including 5, 10 and 15%. The water/ binder (W/B) ratio and total binder content for all types of mixes were fixed at 0.30 and 484 kg/m3, respectively. The fresh properties of SCHPCs were investigated by slump flow, T50, V-funnel flow time and L-box (blocking ratio) tests. The hardened properties of SCHPCs were tested for bulk density, compressive, splitting tensile and flexural strengths and ultrasonic pulse velocity (UPV). The results showed that there was a progressive decrease in flowability properties of SCHPC with increasing SF content. Whereas, test results the compressive, splitting tensile and flexural strengths and UPV increased with increase in SF levels. Furthermore, SCHPC mixture contains 10% cement replacement of SF exhibited higher values of compressive strength, splitting tensile strength, flexural strength and UPV compared with control mix of SCHPC for 28 days. The final conclusion is that SF can be used as a sustainable supplementary cementing material in producing self-compacting high performance concretes.