EVALUATION OF CEMENTING EFFICIENCY IN QUATERNARY BLENDED SELF-COMPACTING CONCRETE

The contribution of metakaolin (MK) to any property of hardened concrete may be expressed in terms of efficiency factor, k. For this new material to be generally accepted by the building industry, a good durability must be proven also in quantitative terms. Therefore a big challenge for researchers within this field is to determine the strength efficiency of metakaolin (MK) in binary, ternary and quaternary blended SCC mixes. For calculating the efficiency of Metakaolin, microsilica and fly ash combination in binary and ternary blended SCC, an equation has been proposed by author based on the principle of Bolomey's equation for predicting the strength of concrete containing mineral admixtures. The strength efficiency factor ‘k' is evaluated for three cases in quaternary blended SCC mixes: (1) micro silica (MS) is singly blended in SCC, (2) micro silica (MS) is blended with fly ash (FA) in SCC and (3) Metakaolin (MK) is blended with micro silica (MS) and fly ash (FA) SCC mix. The computed efficiency factors may be incorporated in the design of a blended concrete mixture, a method known as rational proportioning. The k value can be used to transform a certain amount of pozzolan to an equivalent amount of cement in terms of strength contribution; hence, it can be used as a basis for a more efficient proportioning of blended SCC mixes.