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Effect of silica fume and fly ash as cementitious material on hardened properties and embodied carbon of roller compacted concrete

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Abstract

The production of cement releases an enormous amount of CO2 into the environment. Besides, industrial wastes like silica fume and fly ash need effective utilization to reduce their impacts on the environment. This research aims to explore the influence of silica fume (SF) and fly ash (FA) individually and combine them as binary cementitious material (BCM) on the hardened properties and embodied carbon of roller compacted concrete (RCC). A total of ten mixes were prepared with 1:2:4 mix ratio at the different water-cement ratios to keep the zero slump of roller compacted concrete. However, the replacement proportions for SF were 5%–15%, and FA were 5%–15% by the weight of cement individually and combine in roller compacted concrete for determining the hardened properties and embodied carbon. In this regard, several numbers of concrete specimens (cubes and cylinders) were cast and cured for 7 and 28 days correspondingly. It was observed that the compressive strength of RCC is boosted by 33.6 MPa and 30.6 MPa while using 10% of cement replaced with SF and FA individually at 28 days, respectively. Similarly, the splitting tensile strength of RCC is enhanced by 3.5 MPa at 10% cement replaced with SF and FA on 28 days, respectively. The compressive and splitting tensile strength of RCC is increased by 34.2 MPa and 3.8 MPa at SF7.5FA7.5 as BCM after 28 days consistently. In addition, the water absorption of RCC decreased while using SF and FA as cementitious material individually and together at 28 days. Besides, the embodied carbon of RCC decreased with increasing the replacement level of SF and FA by the mass of cement individually and combined.

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The data used in this study will be made available upon the request.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to Mehran UET Jamshoro for providing required tools to conduct this research study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Civil Engineering, Mehran University of Engineering and Technology Jamshoro, Sindh, Pakistan

    Aneel Kumar, Israr Ahmed, Samar Hussain Rizvi & Rabinder Kumar

  2. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS, Bandar Seri Iskandar, 31750, Tronoh, Perak, Malaysia

    Naraindas Bheel

  3. Department of Civil Engineering, Mehran University of Engineering and Technology, Shaheed Zulifiqar Ali Bhutto Campus, Khairpur Mirs, Sindh, Pakistan

    Ashfaque Ahmed Jhatial

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  1. Aneel Kumar
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  2. Naraindas Bheel
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Contributions

Aneel Kumar: Supervision, Methodology, Writing – Original Draft, Funding Acquisition, Writing – Review and Editing.

Naraindas Bheel: Conceptualization, Investigation, Data Analysis, Validation, Writing – Original Draft, Writing – Review and Editing.

Israr Ahmed: Data Analysis, Validation, Writing – Original Draft.

Samar Hussain Rizvi: Data Analysis, Validation, Writing – Original Draft

Rabinder Kumar: Formal Analysis, Validation.

Ashfaque Ahmed Jhatial: Review, Validation.

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Correspondence to Aneel Kumar.

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Kumar, A., Bheel, N., Ahmed, I. et al. Effect of silica fume and fly ash as cementitious material on hardened properties and embodied carbon of roller compacted concrete. Environ Sci Pollut Res 29, 1210–1222 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-15734-0

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