Behaviour of High Performance Blended Ternary Concrete Prepared Using Alternative Materials

Concrete is most widely used construction material. Traditionally, concrete is made up of cement, river sand used as fine aggregates, crushed stone aggregates used as coarse aggregates and water. Nowadays, river sand is not readily available for use in many places. To protect the river beds against the erosion and to ascertain the importance of having natural sand as a filter for ground water, periodic restrictions are being introduced by governmental authorities against the collection of river sand. Due to short supply of natural sand and increased activity in the construction sector, there is an urgent requirement of a material that matches the properties of natural sand. The ROBO sand is one of the major alternative material that can replace natural sand in concrete production, and available in abundance in various quarries as well. The objective of the present study is to investigate the effect of the physical and chemical properties of ROBO sand towards the performance of the medium strength concrete. For this, mix design was carried out for medium strength concrete considering different proportions of ROBO sand and natural sand. The fresh and hardened properties of concrete such as workability, compressive strength, splitting tensile strength and flexural strength were investigated, and the optimum replacement level of ROBO sand was determined. Also, the durability of concrete was tested for rapid chloride permeability for the concrete specimens prepared at optimum replacement level of ROBO sand. The experimental and analytical investigation carried out in the study shows that the ROBO sand can be used for the preparation of the concrete as far as the mechanical properties, durability properties the concrete are considered.