Flexural Behaviour of Sustainable Reinforced Concrete Beams with GGBFS and M-Sand

Abstract

The need for an alternative supplementary material for the Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC) is need of an hour for making concrete with less carbon footprint.  The use of industrial by-products as supplementary material for OPC will be an ideal solution for reducing the carbon footprint.  The need for a replacement for river sand is also a most important concern in present condition.  The degradation of riverbed resulting in the non-availability of river sand and therefore an alternative material is required.  In this study, the use of Ground Granulated Blast Furnace Slag (GGBFS) and Manufacturing Sand (M-Sand) as an alternative material for cement and M-Sand respectively.  The OPC is partially replaced with 40% of GGBFS and river sand is completely replaced (100%) with M-Sand.   The flexural behaviour of reinforced concrete beams with GGBFS and M-Sand are studied using four number of under-reinforced beams such as under-reinforced conventional concrete beam, under-reinforced concrete beam with M-Sand, under-reinforced concrete beam with 40% GGBFS and river sand and under-reinforced concrete beam with 40% GGBFS and 100% M-Sand.  From the investigational findings the beam elements with 40% GGBFS and 100% M-Sand showed better performance than all other beam elements.  The investigation results are compared with Finite Element Analysis (FEA) results using ANSYS.  The load Vs deflection behaviour of concrete beams are plotted and the structural parameters such as ultimate load carrying capacity, ductility are arrived and presented.