Cracking and Durability in Sustainable Concretes

Abstract

In this research, a natural pozzolanic cementitious material known as zeolite is being utilized to investigate the performance of High-Performance Concrete (HPC).

Several binary (cement+zeolite) and ternary (cement+zeolite+other supplementary cementitious material) based concrete mixtures including a control mixture of Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC) with water - cementitious (w/cm) ratios of 0.40 and 0.44 are cast by replacing cement with different percentage level of zeolite material.

The purpose of this study is to investigate effectiveness of zeolite material by means of long term compressive strength (7 to 91 days), tensile strength, modulus of elasticity and corrosion resistance in several concrete mixtures from 7 to 28 days.

The compressometer is utilized for the measurement of the modulus of elasticity and Universal Testing Machine (UTM) is utilized to measure the compressive and tensile strength of concrete.

In addition, a 4-point Wenner Probe resistivity meter is tested to determine the surface electrical resistivity of concrete, which provides an indirect indication of permeability and in turn, chloride induced corrosion durability in reinforced concrete structures.

Overall, zeolite based concrete mixtures with 0.40 w/cm ratio and ¾ inch aggregate size provide promising results in terms of compressive strength, tensile strength and remarkable improvement on corrosion resistance in terms of achievement of surface resistivity data