Effect of Incorporating Blended Cement on Fresh and Hardened Properties of Concrete

Concrete mixtures containing 10% metakaolin (MK) replacement and 10% metakaolin addition, water/binder material ratio of 0.5 and 3% superplasticizer were studied. Similar mixtures incorporating silica fume (SF) and fly ash (FA) were also prepared. The effect of blended cements on the fresh and hardened properties of concrete was investigated. The study concludes that, mixtures with blended cement exhibited lower workability, less bleeding and slightly lower air content. Mixtures incorporating blended cement developed higher compressive strength and splitting tensile strength at all ages. The enhancement was more pronounced at early ages, for MK and SF, and in the addition mixtures. The SF addition mixture attained 85.99% and 37.46% strength improvement while the SF replacement mixture achieved 50.38% and 26.85% strength increment at the respective ages of 7 and 500 days.