• Computers and Concrete
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• 제23권1호
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• pp.37-47
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• 2019

In view of the increasing utility of concrete as a construction material, the major challenge is to improve the quality of construction. Nowadays the common problem faced by many of the concrete plants is the shortage of river sand as fine aggregate material. This led to the utilization of locally available materials from quarries as fine aggregate. With the percentage of fines present in Crushed Rock Fines (CRF)or crushed sand is more compared to river sand, it shows a better performance in terms of fresh properties. The present study deals with the formulation of SCC mix design based on the chosen plastic viscosity of the mix and the measured plastic viscosity of cement pastes incorporating supplementary cementitious materials with CRF and river sand as a fine aggregate. Four different combinations including two binary and one ternary mix are adopted for the current study. Influence of plastic viscosity of the mix on the fresh and hardened properties are investigated for SCC mixes with varying water to cement ratios. It is observed that for an increasing plastic viscosity of the mix, slump flow, T500 and J-ring spread increased but V-funnel and L-box decreased. Compressive, split tensile and flexural strengths decreased with the increase in plastic viscosity.

• Computers and Concrete
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• 제19권6호
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• pp.651-658
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• 2017

High-performance concrete, besides aggregate, cement, and water, incorporates supplementary cementitious materials, such as fly ash and blast furnace slag, and chemical admixture, such as superplasticizer. Hence, it is a highly complex material and modeling its behavior represents a difficult task. This paper presents an evolutionary system for the prediction of high performance concrete strength. The proposed framework blends a recently developed version of genetic programming with a local search method. The resulting system enables us to build a model that produces an accurate estimation of the considered parameter. Experimental results show the suitability of the proposed system for the prediction of concrete strength. The proposed method produces a lower error with respect to the state-of-the art technique. The paper provides two contributions: from the point of view of the high performance concrete strength prediction, a system able to outperform existing state-of-the-art techniques is defined; from the machine learning perspective, this case study shows that including a local searcher in the geometric semantic genetic programming system can speed up the convergence of the search process.

• Computers and Concrete
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• 제16권6호
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• pp.865-880
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• 2015

Standard test method for bulk electrical conductivity (ASTM C1760) provides a rapid indication of the concrete's resistance to the penetration of chloride ions by diffusion. In this paper a new approach for assessing the bulk electrical conductivity of saturated specimens of hardened concrete is presented. The test involves saturating concrete specimens with a 5 M NaCl solution before measuring the conductivity of the samples. By saturating specimens with a highly conductive solution, they showed virtually the same pore solution conductivity. Different concrete samples yield different conductivity primarily due to differences in their pore structure. The feasibility of the method has been demonstrated by testing different concrete mixtures consisting ordinary and blended cement of silica fume (SF) and calcined perlite powder (CPP). Two standard test methods of RCPT (ASTM C1202) and Bulk Conductivity (ASTM C1760) were also applied to all of the samples. The results show that for concretes containing SF and CPP, the proposed method is less sensitive towards the variations in the pore solution conductivity in comparison with RCPT and Bulk Conductivity tests. It seems that this method is suitable for the assessment of the performance and durability of different concretes containing supplementary cementitious materials.

• Advances in concrete construction
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• 제5권3호
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• pp.241-255
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• 2017

Concrete is known to be the most used construction material worldwide. The environmental and economic aspects of Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC) containing concrete have led research studies to investigate the possibility of incorporating supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs) in concrete. Metakaolin (MK) is one SCM with high pozzolanic reactivity generated throughout the thermal activation of high purity kaolinite clay at a temperature ranging from $500^{\circ}C$ to $800^{\circ}C$. Although many studies have evaluated the effect of MK on mechanical properties of concrete and have reported positive effects, limited articles are considering the effect of MK on durability properties of concrete. Considering the lifetime assessment of concrete structures, the durability of concrete has become of particular interest recently. In the present work, the influences of MK on mechanical and durability properties of concrete mixtures are evaluated. Various experiments such as slump flow test, compressive strength, water permeability, freeze and thaw cycles, rapid chloride penetration and surface resistivity tests were carried out to determine mechanical and durability properties of concretes. Concretes made with the incorporation of MK revealed better mechanical and durability properties compared to control concretes due to combined pozzolanic reactivity and the filler effect of MK.

• Computers and Concrete
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• 제26권2호
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• pp.175-183
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• 2020

Fly ash has become an important component of concrete as supplementary cementitious material with the development of concrete technology. To make use of fly ash efficiently, four types of fly ash with particle size distributions that are in conformity with four functions, namely, S.Tsivilis, Andersen, Normal and F distribution, respectively, were prepared. The four particle size distributions as functions of the strength and pore structure of concrete were thereafter constructed and investigated. The results showed that the compressive and flexural strength of concrete with the fly ash that conforming to S.Tsivilis, Normal, F distribution increased by 5-10 MPa and 1-2 MPa, respectively, compared to the reference sample at 28 d. The pore structure of the concrete was improved, in which the total porosity of concrete decreased by 2-5% at 28 d. With regarding to the fly ash with Andersen distribution, it was however not conducive to the strength development of concrete. Regression model based on the grey multiple linear regression theory was proved to be efficient to predict the strength of concrete, according to the characteristic parameters of particle size and pore structure of the fly ash.

• 한국건축시공학회:학술대회논문집
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• 한국건축시공학회 2018년도 추계 학술논문 발표대회
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• pp.46-47
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• 2018

High performance concrete with low water-to-cement ratio has been widely used with increased demand of high rising buildings and huge scaled structures. Additionally, for high performance concrete, various SCMs are replaced to improve its performance from fresh state to hardened state. With the drawback of increased viscosity of the concrete mixture for high performance concrete, low-viscosity typed high range water reducer is the relatively new admixture. Therefore, as a goal of the research, under using various SCMs with wide range of content, the performance of low-viscosity typed high range water reducer was evaluated. Especially, in this research, the influence of low-viscosity typed high range water reducer on rheological properties including plastic viscosity and yield stress were assessed. As a result of the research, it is expected to provide a fundamental information of low -viscosity typed high ranged water reducer on high performance concrete with various conditions of SCMs.

• 한국콘크리트학회:학술대회논문집
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• 한국콘크리트학회 2006년도 추계 학술발표회 논문집
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• pp.577-580
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• 2006

This paper presents the experimental results of frost durability characteristics including freezing-thawing and de-icing salt scaling of the concrete used for gutter of the road. Mixtures were proportioned with the three level of water-binder ratio (W/B), 0.58, 0.53, and 0.48, and two binder compositions corresponding to Type I cement without any supplementary cementitious materials (OPC) and Type I cement with 30% blast-furnace slag replacement (Slag30). Also, two different solutions of calcium chloride and water that contains 0 and 8g of anhydrous calcium chloride in each 100 mL of solution, respectively, were used to evaluate their effect on the frost durability resistance. Test results showed that the Slag30 mixture exhibited higher durability factor and lower mass loss values than those made with OPC. Among the mixture tested in this work, the mixtures (OPC and Slag30) made with a relatively higher W/B of 0.58 exhibited large amount of the de-icing salt scaling regardless of calcium chloride concentration. Finally, the use of slag can be used effectively in terms of economy and frost durability of the concrete designated for gutter.

• Advances in concrete construction
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• 제5권1호
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• pp.31-48
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• 2017

Supplementary cementitious materials (SCM) have turned out to be a vital portion of extraordinary strength and performance concrete. Metakaolin (MK) is one of SCM material is acquired by calcinations of kaolinite. Universally utilised as pozzolanic material in concrete to enhance mechanical and durability properties. This study investigates the fresh and hardened properties of conventional concrete (CC) and self compacting concrete (SCC) by partially replacing cement with MK in diverse percentages. In CC and SCC, partial replacement of cement with MK varies from 5-20%. Fresh concrete properties of CC are conducted by slump test and compaction factor tests and for SCC, slump flow, T500, J-Ring, L-Box, V-Funnel and U-Box tests. Hardened concrete characteristics are investigated by compressive, split tensile and flexural strengths at age of 7, 28 and 90 days of curing under water. Carbonation depth, water absorption and density of MK based CC and SCC was also computed. Fresh concrete test results indicated that increase in MK replacement increases workability of concrete in a constant w/b ratio. Also, outcomes reveal that concrete integrating MK had greater compressive, flexural and split tensile strengths. Optimum replacement level of MK for cement was 10%, which increased mechanical properties and robustness properties of concrete.

• Computers and Concrete
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• 제33권2호
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• pp.137-145
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• 2024

The technique of experimentally determining concrete's compressive strength for a given mix design is time-consuming and difficult. The goal of the current work is to propose a best working predictive model based on different machine learning algorithms such as Gradient Boosting Machine (GBM), Stacked Ensemble (SE), Distributed Random Forest (DRF), Extremely Randomized Trees (XRT), Generalized Linear Model (GLM), and Deep Learning (DL) that can forecast the compressive strength of ternary geopolymer concrete mix without carrying out any experimental procedure. A geopolymer mix uses supplementary cementitious materials obtained as industrial by-products instead of cement. The input variables used for assessing the best machine learning algorithm not only include individual ingredient quantities, but molarity of the alkali activator and age of testing as well. Myriad statistical parameters used to measure the effectiveness of the models in forecasting the compressive strength of ternary geopolymer concrete mix, it has been found that GBM performs better than all other algorithms. A sensitivity analysis carried out towards the end of the study suggests that GBM model predicts results close to the experimental conditions with an accuracy between 95.6 % to 98.2 % for testing and training datasets.

• Computers and Concrete
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• 제22권4호
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• pp.407-417
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• 2018

Over the past three decades, self-compacting concrete (SCC), which is characterized by its superior rheological properties, has been gradually used in construction industry. It is now recognized that the application of SCC using supplementary cementitious materials (SCM) is highly attractive and promising technology reducing the environmental impact of the construction industry and reducing the higher materials costs. This paper presents an experimental study that investigated the mechanical and durability properties of SCCs manufactured with blended binders including fly ash, slag, and micro-silica. A total of 8 batches of SCCs were manufactured. As series of tests were conducted to establish the rheological properties, compressive strength, and durability properties including the water absorption, water permeability, rapid chloride permeability and initial surface absorption of the SCCs. The influences of the SCC strength grade, blended types and content on the properties of the SCCs are investigated. Unified reactive indices are proposed based on the mix proportion and the chemical composition of the corresponding binders are used to assess the compressive strength and strength development of the SCCs. The results also indicate the differences in the underlying mechanisms to drive the durability properties of the SCC at the different strength grades.