FLEXURAL BEHAVIOUR OF REINFORCED GEOPOLYMER CONCRETE BEAMS PARTIALLY REPLACED WITH RECYCLED COARSE AGGREGATES

Concrete is the most widely used construction material which required large quantities of Portland cement. The production of Ordinary Portland cement causes pollution to the environment, due to the emission of CO 2 and also large amount of natural resources is consumed for the cement production. The large global production of flyash and rapid advances in geopolymer technology leads to the alternate material for OPC that is Geopolymer concrete (GPC). Geopolymers are showing great potential and several researchers have critically examined the various aspects of their viability as binder material. In this paper, results of the studies carried out on the behaviour of ambient cured Reinforced GPC (RGPC) flexural member have been presented..A total of 9 beams were tested in flexure, out of which three were conventional concrete mixes and six GPCmixes having varying combinations of flyash, GGBS and recycled coarse aggregates. The reinforcement was designed considering a balanced section and all the specimens were tested under two point loading The studies showed that the load carrying capacity of the RGPC beams was more than that of the corresponding conventional RCC beam and the load carrying capacity of the beams were decreased when replaced with recycled aggregates. The deflection, cracking load, ultimate load and crack width were recorded.