ENVIRONMENTAL DURABILITY ASSESSMENT OF OPTIMALLY CURED BAGASSE ASH BASED GEOPOLYMER CONCRETE

Abstract

The growing demand for the infrastructure development in country is also demand for the sustainable construction materials which has accelerated the development of eco – friendly alternative to ordinary Portland cement concrete  to geopolymer concrete. As the constructional industry is one of the key factors for the country development, there is increase in the production of the cement also but this led to increase in pollution due to emission of CO2 during manufacturing process. As this the reason, geopolymer concrete is one of the solution to move towards the sustainability in construction industry. Geopolymer concrete is concrete which uses the industrial and agricultural waste and help to decrease the pollution. In this research paper, study had been done to investigates the environmentally durability of the fly ash based geopolymer concrete incorporating 15% replacement of sugarcane bagasse ash (SCBA) as  the optimum replacement for fly ash. Bagasse ash based Geopolymer concrete is prepared using 16M NaOH solution and Na2SiO3 alkaline activator. This bagasse ash based geopolymer concrete is oven cured at optimum 100°C temperature for 18hours. At the optimum temperature, curing hours and percentage replacement of bagasse ash durability performance was evaluated under different conditions such as water absorption, water penetration test, ultrasonic pulse velocity (UPV), Rapid Chloride Penetration test (RCPT), acid attack, pull out test and corrosion test. The results shows at optimum percentage replacement of bagasse ash, temperature and curing hours exhibited a dense and homogenous concrete.