Strength, Permeability and Carbonation properties of Concrete containing Kota Stone Slurry

Abstract

Concrete and stone, both are the most commonly used building materials. Rapid development in infrastructure sector has boosted the demand of both, resulting in many environmental concerns. Energy consumption and CO2 emission associated with the production of concrete and cement is a big concern. On the other side, there is a huge solid waste associated with the stone industry which has manifold environmental and financial concerns. For sustainable development, there is a need to utilize the stone waste as a partial replacement of cement (mineral admixture) in concrete so that so that the two problems simultaneously get solved. Kota stone slurry (KSS), which is abundantly available in area of Kota, Rajasthan was used as a partial replacement of the cement in this study. The objective of the present study is to determine strength and durability parameters of the concrete containing Kota stone slurry. The experimental program consists of preparing concrete mixes with two water binder ratios: 0.40 and 0.50 with varying Kota stone slurry percentage as 0, 5, 10, 15, 20 and 25% partially replaced with cement. Compressive and flexural strength test, pull-off test were performed to evaluate strength and DIN 1048 water permeability test, carbonation test and abrasion test were performed to check the durability of concrete mixes. The results indicate that with the increase in Kota stone slurry content, the compressive and flexural strength decreased. There is a marginal decrease in permeability also but the mixes containing Kota stone slurry displayed better resistance to abrasion indicating their suitability as good floor and pavement material. The properties of concrete with Kota stone slurry indicates that it can serve as an alternating material in low cost rural pavements.