SELF-COMPACTING CONCRETE: FRESH PROPERTIES AND FLOW SIMULATION

Abstract

Concrete represents the foremost used material in the construction industry and selfcompacting concrete (SCC) is a modern technology that has had a significant impact on the industry and has gradually replaced traditional vibrated concrete (TVC). Ground granulated blast-furnace slag (GGBS) has been utilised in SCC as a cement replacement material (CRM) because of its benefit in decreasing the carbon emission caused by cement production, which makes the SCC an environmentally friendly material. Moreover, utilising the GGBS in SCC would have an economic advantage. This dissertation is an attempt to evaluate the impact of GGBS on the SCC’s fresh and hardened properties. The design methodology, which was developed in the Civil Engineering department at Cardiff University, will be based on the targeted compressive strength and the desired plastic viscosity. The compressive strength is selected to be 40 MPa and the plastic viscosity is chosen to be 7 Pa s. The cement replacement by GGBS will be varied between 25% to 35% of the cementitious materials. The mix design has been evaluated through experimental validation by preparing several SCC mixtures in the concrete laboratory to test their fresh properties, as well as their hardened properties. The tests conducted match the European Guidelines for SCC with the slump cone test and J-ring test being used to evaluate the fresh properties, while in the hardened state, a standard cube (100 mm) was used to test the compressive strength. The outcomes show that the suggested strategy can produce a high-performance SCC mix. The conducted experiments were then simulated through using a smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) approach for numerical simulation, the objective of which was to evaluate the SPH method’s ability to predict the SCC flow in the slump cone test. The simulation results revealed that the mixtures had satisfied the filling and the passing ability, criterion.