• Advances in concrete construction
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.193-206
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• 2021

Extensive research has been conducted on the basic mechanical property and structural applications of engineered cementitious composites (ECC). Despite the high tensile ductility and high toughness of ECC, transverse steel reinforcement is still necessary to confine ECC for high performance. However, limited research has examined performance of ECC confined with practical amount of transverse reinforcement. This paper presents the results of axial compression tests on 14 square ECC columns and 4 conventional concrete columns (used as control specimens) with transverse reinforcement. The test variables were spacing, configuration (square ties or square and diamond shape ties), and yield strength of stirrups. The test showed that ECC columns confined with steel stirrup had good compressive ductility, and the stirrup spacing had the greatest effect on the compressive performance. The self-confinement effect of ECC results in a more uniform but slower expansion of the whole column compared with CC ones. The test results are then compared against the predictions from a number of existing models for conventional confined concrete. It is indicated that these models fail to predict the axial strains at peak axial stress and the trend of the stress-strain curve of steel stirrups-confined ECC with sufficient accuracy. Several new equations are then proposed for the compressive properties of steel-confined ECC based on test results and potential approaches for future studies are proposed.

• Advances in concrete construction
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.89-98
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• 2021

Investigations on the dynamic behavior of concrete members, incorporating steel fibers with different aspect ratios, are limited so far and do not covered comprehensively in prior studies. Present endeavor is devoted to examine the dynamic response of the steel fibrous concrete beams and slabs under the influence of impact loading. These members were reinforced with steel fibers in different length of 25 mm and 50 mm. Four concrete mixes were designed and used based on the proportion of long and short fibers. Twenty-four slabs and beams were fabricated with respect to the concrete mix and these specimens were tested in impact load experiment. Testing observations revealed that the maximum dynamic deflection or ductility of the member can be achieved with increasing the fiber length. Structural behavior of the tested structures was predicted using nonlinear finite element analysis with specific material constitutive relationships. Eight nodes plate elements have been considered in the present dynamic analysis. Dynamic fracture energy of the members was calculated and agreement ratio, of more than 70%, was noticed between the experimental and analysis outcomes.

• Advances in concrete construction
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.261-270
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• 2021

In this study, a new understanding is presented on the microcracking behavior of high strength concrete (HSC) with steel fiber addition having prior compressive loading history. Microcracking behavior at critical stress (σcr) region, using seven fiber addition volume of 0.5, 0.75, 1.0, 1.25, 1.5, 1.75, and 2.0% was evaluated, at two aspect ratios (60 and 75). The specimens were loaded up to a specified compressive stress levels (0.70fc-0.96fc), and subsequently subjected to split tensile tests. This was followed by microscopic analyses afterwards. Four compressive stress levels as percentage of fc were selected according to the linearity end point based on stress-time (σ-t) diagram under uniaxial compression. It was seen that pre-compression has an effect on the linearity end point as well as fiber addition where it lies within 85-91% of fc. Tensile strength gain was observed in some cases with respect to the 'maiden' tensile strength as oppose to tensile strength loss due to the fiber addition with teething effect. Aggregate cracking was the dominant failure mode instead of bond cracks due to improved matrix quality. The presence of the steel fiber improved the extensive failure pattern of cracks where it changes from 'macrocracks' to a branched network of microcracks especially at higher fiber dosages. The applied pre-compression resulted in hardening effect, but the cracking process is similar to that in concrete without fiber addition.

• Advances in concrete construction
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.219-229
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• 2021

In recent years, geopolymer cements, have gained significant attention as an environmental-friendly type of cement. In this experimental research, effects of different alkaline activator solutions and variations of associated parameters, including time of addition, concentration, and weight ratio, on the mechanical strengths of Granulated Ground Blast Furnace Slag (GGBFS)-based Geopolymer Concrete (GPC) were investigated. Investigation of the effects of simultaneous usage of KOH and NaOH solutions on the tensile and flexural strengths of GGBFS-based GPC, and the influence of NaOH solution addition time delay on the mechanical strengths is among the novel aspects investigated in this research. four series of mix designs and corresponding specimen testing is conducted to study different parameters of the active alkali solutions on GPC mechanical strengths. The results showed that addition of NaOH to the mix after 3 min of mixing KOH and Na2SiO3 with dry components (1/3 of the total mixing duration) resulted in the highest compressive, tensile and flexural strengths amongst other cases. Moreover, increasing the KOH concentration up to 12 M resulted in the highest compressive strength, while weight ratio of 1.5 for Na2SiO3/KOH was the optimum value to achieve highest compressive strengths.

• Advances in concrete construction
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.231-238
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• 2021

The present work aims at investigating the effects of using various fine mineral additions as partial replacement to Portland cement on the tribological properties of concrete. To achieve this goal, concrete mixtures were prepared with different percentages (10, 20 and 30%) of limestone fillers (LF) and natural pozzolana (NP), and (20, 40 and 60%) of blast furnace slag (BFS). The interface yield stress (τ0) and viscous constants (η) that allow characterizing friction at the concrete-pipe wall interface were determined using a rotational tribometer. In addition, the compositions of the boundary layers that formed in the pumping pipes of the different concretes under study were also identified and analyzed. The experimental results obtained showed that the concretes studied have a linear tribological behavior that can be described by the Bingham model. Furthermore, the use of different mineral additions, especially limestone fillers and blast furnace slags, even at high rates, had a beneficial effect on the optimization of the volume of paste present in the boundary layer, which made it possible to significantly reduce the viscous constant of concrete. However, a maximum rate of 10% of natural pozzolana was recommended to achieve tribological properties that are favorable to the pumpability of concrete.

• Advances in concrete construction
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.173-181
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• 2021

The main objective of this work is to contribute to the valorization of plastic and glass waste in the improvement of concrete properties. Waste glass after grinding was used as a partial replacement of the cement with a percentage of 15%. The plastic waste was cut and introduced as fibers with 1% by the total volume of the mixture. Mechanical and durability tests were conducted for various mixtures of concrete as compressive and flexural strengths, water absorption, ultrasonic pulse velocity, and acid attack. Also, other in-depth analyses were performed on samples of each variant such as X-ray diffraction (XRD), thermogravimetric analysis (DSC-TGA), and scanning electron microscope (SEM). The results show that the addition of glass powder or plastic fibers or a combination of both in concrete improved in the compression and flexural strengths in the long term. The highest compressive strength was obtained in the mix which combines the two wastes about 26.72% of increase compared to the control concrete. The flexural strength increased in the mixture containing the glass powder. Therefore, the mixture with two wastes exhibits better resistance to aggressive sulfuric acid attack, and incorporating glass powder improves the ultrasonic pulse velocity.

• Advances in concrete construction
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.111-126
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• 2021

Concrete cracking due to brittle tension strength significantly prevents fully utilization of the materials for "flexural-shear failure" type shear walls. Theoretical and experimental studies applying fiber reinforced concrete (FRC) have achieved fruitful results in improving the seismic performance of "flexural-shear failure" reinforced concrete shear walls. To come to an understanding of an optimal design strategy and find common performance prediction method for design methodology in terms to FRC shear walls, seismic performance on shear walls with PVA and steel FRC at edge columns and plastic region are compared in this study. The seismic behavior including damage mode, lateral bearing capacity, deformation capacity, and energy dissipation capacity are analyzed on different fiber reinforcing strategies. The experimental comparison realized that the lateral strength and deformation capacity are significantly improved for the shear walls with PVA and steel FRC in the plastic region and PVA FRC in the edge columns; PVA FRC improves both in tensile crack prevention and shear tolerance while steel FRC shows enhancement mainly in shear resistance. Moreover, the tensile strength of the FRC are suggested to be considered, and the steel bars in the tension edge reaches the ultimate strength for the confinement of the FRC in the yield and maximum lateral bearing capacity prediction comparing with the model specified in provisions.

• Advances in concrete construction
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.239-253
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• 2021

The behavior of concrete containing waste glass as a replacement of cement or aggregate was studied previously in the most of researches, but the present investigation focuses on the recycling of waste glass powder as a substitute for silica fume in high strength concrete (HSC). This endeavor deals with the efficiency of using waste glass powder, as an alternative for silica fume, in the flexural capacity of HSC beam. Thirteen members with dimensions of 0.3 m width, 0.15 m depth and 0.9 m span length were utilized in this work. A comparison study was performed considering HSC members and hybrid beams fabricated by HSC and conventional normal concrete (CC). In addition to the experiments on the influence of glass powder on flexural behavior, numerical analysis was implemented using nonlinear finite element approach to simulate the structural performance of the beams. Same constitutive relationships were selected to model the behavior of HSC with waste glass powder or silica fume to show the matching between the modeling outputs for beams made with these powders. The results showed that the loading capacity and ductility index of the HSC beams with waste glass powder demonstrated enhancing ultimate load and ductility compared with those of HSC specimens with silica fume. The study deduced that the recycled waste glass powder is a good alternative to the pozzolanic powder of silica fume.

• Advances in concrete construction
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.183-192
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• 2021

Due to economic and environmental benefits, increasing the substitution ratio of ordinary cement by industry by-products like fly ash (FA) is one of the best approaches to reduce the impact of the concrete industry on the environment. However, as the substitution rate of FA increases, it will have an adverse impact on the performance of cement-based materials, so the actual substitution rate of FA is limited to around 10-30%. Therefore, in order to increase the early-age strength of high replacement (30-70%) low-calcium ultrafine FA blended cement paste, sodium sulfate and calcium sulfate dihydrate were used to improve the reactivity of FA. The results show that sodium sulfate has a significant enhancement effect on the strength of the composite pastes in the early and late ages, while calcium sulfate dihydrate has only a slight effect in the late ages. The addition of sodium sulfate in the cement-FA blended system can enhance the gain rate of non-evaporation water, and can decrease the Ca(OH)2 content. In addition, when the sulfate chemical activators are added, the ettringite content increases, and the surface of the FA is dissolved and hydrated.

• Advances in concrete construction
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.11-23
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• 2022

Conventional concrete needs some improvement in the mechanical properties, which can be obtained by different admixtures. However, making concrete samples costume always time and money. In this paper, different types of hybrid algorithms are applied to develop predictive models for forecasting compressive strength (CS) of concretes containing metakaolin (MK) and fly ash (FA). In this regard, three different algorithms have been used, namely multilayer perceptron (MLP), radial basis function (RBF), and support vector machine (SVR), to predict CS of concretes by considering most influencers input variables. These algorithms integrated with the grey wolf optimization (GWO) algorithm to increase the model's accuracy in predicting (GWMLP, GWRBF, and GWSVR). The proposed MLP models were implemented and evaluated in three different layers, wherein each layer, GWO, fitted the best neuron number of the hidden layer. Correspondingly, the key parameters of the SVR model are identified using the GWO method. Also, the optimization algorithm determines the hidden neurons' number and the spread value to set the RBF structure. The results show that the developed models all provide accurate predictions of the CS of concrete incorporating MK and FA with R² larger than 0.9972 and 0.9976 in the learning and testing stage, respectively. Regarding GWMLP models, the GWMLP1 model outperforms other GWMLP networks. All in all, GWSVR has the worst performance with the lowest indices, while the highest score belongs to GWRBF.