The setting behavior, mechanical properties and drying shrinkage of ternary blended concrete containing granite quarry dust and processed steel slag aggregate

The manufacturing of concrete composites have released high volume of carbon dioxide (CO2) gaseous to the environment in the world. Therefore, finding an alternative materials to replace the raw material used in the production of concrete composites have become a current agenda. The industrial waste materials mainly from local coal-fuelled power plant, granite quarrying process, and iron and steel manufacturing industry were utilized in the high-performance concrete production. The waste materials incorporated included ground granulated blast-furnace slag (GGBS), pulverized fly ash (PFA), granite quarry dust (GQD) and electric arc furnace slag (EAFS) were used to partially or completely replace the usage of a synthetic and natural constituent materials in the concrete production which included ordinary Portland cement (OPC), natural river sand (NRS), and natural granite rock (NGR). The study was aimed to establish the feasibility of using EAFS as partial or complete replacement of NGR as the coarse aggregate of concrete with other industrial waste materials in the binder and fine aggregate phase. In addition, the method of optimization on the OPC-GGBS-PFA as a ternary blended binder system was also established. Meanwhile, the optimum combination of chemical admixture dosage was also determined in this study. The concrete composition with the established optimum ternary blended binder system, chemical admixture combination and NRS-GQD composition as a fine aggregate were examined with various NGR replacement level with EAFS ranging from 0% to 100% at the increment of 20%. The properties of the concrete mixes were examined by setting time test on the fresh concrete, mechanical strength tests and drying shrinkage assessment on the hardened concrete. The results showed that the inclusion of the aforementioned waste tends to improve the mechanical strength properties of the concrete, while, reducing the magnitude of length change in terms of drying shrinkage. With such, a concrete with compressive strength of 80 MPa able to be produced with the used of waste material from the industry up to 80% of the total volume. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.