Study on physical properties of quaternary cement concrete with novocon XR steel fibers

Received: 12 June 2018 Accepted: 14 December 2018 From a sustainability perspective quaternary concrete is highly advantageous. In context to the present study, M35 grade concrete (W/C =0.42 & 1.2% super-plasticizer) was made using quaternary binders such as OPC-43 cement, supplementary cementitious materials (SCM’s) viz. micro silica(SF), flyash class F(FA) and meta-kaolin(MK) in varying proportions by mass. This paper presents the results of the exhaustive study to compare the physical properties of quaternary concrete with and without steel fibers. Novocon XR steel fiber of 1% by volume (RIv = 0.5) was also added to the mix to enhance the ductility, post-cracking, flexural and split tensile strength. The synergistic action of supplementary cementitious materials with cement has a beneficial effect on the strength and in most mixes the strength of concrete showed impressive results with age. With the addition of steel fibers to the quaternary concrete samples, the early strength of the quaternary concrete mixes increased significantly. For instance, mixes with 30% cement replacement had considerably higher workability than the control mix C0. The workability reduced with the decrease in flyash content and increase in micro silica and addition of steel fibers also took a toll on the workability. The compressive, split tensile and flexural strength of the specimens decreased as we go from QC1 to QC5 and S1 to S5 samples. The central deflection at failure for fiber reinforced samples increased by a minimum of 1.27 times for mix S5 at 3 day and a maximum of 2.53 times for mix S1 at the 7 day of curing. Finally the plot between flexural strength versus compressive strength at 28 days, were in good agreement with the empirical equations of quaternary concrete but the results for split tensile tests versus 28 day compressive strength were lower than the proposed empirical values for both quaternary and fiber reinforced concrete.