Strength and durability characteristics of steel fiber-reinforced geopolymer concrete with addition of waste materials

In general, all countries in the world use ordinary Portland cement concrete for the construction purpose; this ordinary Portland cement (OPC) gives good mechanical properties and durability to the buildings. The binder cement and the filler aggregate are the ingredients widely used in the process of concrete. Natural resources are used to extract both filler and binder elements. In India, the fast-growing sectors like infrastructure, smart cities development, and real estate consume concrete in large quantity. Also, India is the second largest cement manufacturer in the world. The need of cement is increasing day to day, even though the country is manufacturing the cement more than the required demand. In an average, the cement manufacturing industries produce 6% of CO2; for example, if industries produce 1 tonne of cement, they also emit 1 tonne of CO2. This brings us environment changes and produces more pollution to the country. To handle this situation, after many research, geopolymer concrete has been developed. Geopolymer concrete (GC) is all about mixing of source materials to the alkaline solution. Fly ash (FA) that is collected from the power plant is used in GC. The FA-based GC gives more strength when compared to the normal OPC concrete. Under ambient and steam curing, the compression, flexural strength, and tensile strength of FAGC and steel-reinforced geopolymer (SFGC) were tested and results were compared with normal concrete. FAGC mix proportions were studied under different ratios for sodium hydroxide and sodium silicate with 10 M. When compared with normal cement, the strength given by FAGC achieved good strength under ambient temperature. FAGC was further tested for the acid, sulfate, water absorption, and sorptivity test and compared with OPC concrete.