Development of Mixture Design of Ultra High Performance Concrete and its Properties

Abstract

Durability of infrastructure has become a major challenge for the construction industry all over the world due to the rise in pollution level by various man-made and natural processes. For developing country like India there is a need for the adoption of a durable material to construct various infrastructure such as buildings, highways, ports, railways, precast structures and bridges. These infrastructure need to be durable and life cycle maintenance cost should be low as possible. Considering the need for durability, security and safety of concrete structures leads concrete development considerably Which pointed to the advancement of concrete i,e high strength concrete, high-performance concrete, fiber reinforced concrete and hence ultra high-performance fiber reinforced concrete (UHPFRC). Ultra-High Performance Concrete (UHPC) is a cementitious concrete that has a minimum designated compressive strength of 130 Mpa with durability, tensile and ductility requirements fiber are included in the mixture to achieve specified requirements. Since UHPC is having outstanding mechanical performance and durability as a result, less than -60\% is needed to achieve the same structural requirements. This leads to lower weight, less substructure installation costs. This paper addresses the work is aimed to develop the mixture design of ultra-high performance concrete, to target compressive strength of (150 – 200) mpa and flexural strength of (20 - 30) mpa, using domestic materials. In this mixture design were referred from available mixtures in literature and then various trials and errors were conducted experimentally, material used in this mix design is cement, micro silica fume, quartz powder, ennore sand of grade I and grade III, micro steel fiber and HRWR superplasticizer masterglenium sky 8777 are used to development of the mixture design of Ultra-high performance concrete. Trial mixture design of UHPC were subjected to water curing method only and its mechanical properties are evaluated by compressive strength, flexural strength and workability of mix design by flow table test. Compressive strength of 108 mpa at 7 days and 136 mpa at 28 days for final mix design of UHPC with 2 \% micro steel fiber and w/b ratio of 0.20, flexural strength of 17.1 mpa and 25.6 mpa at 28 days for final mix design of UHPC with 2 \% micro steel fiber was achieved. Cube size effect were studied and found experimentally that decrease in size of cube resulted in increase of compressive strength but difference in strength was not significant. To evaluating the durability properties of UHPC with and without micro steel fiber, rapid chloride penetration test was performed which shows that chloride ion penetrability lies in very low range and sorptivity test was carried to find given developed concrete tendency to absorb water by capillary suction. It was found that the initial and secondary water absorption rate was much slower than that of ordinary concrete. So therefore by durability test of UHPC, it shows that durability properties about UHPC are much more reliable than conventional concrete.