Experimental investigation on the effect of cementitious materials on fresh and mechanical properties of self-consolidating concrete

Although applying self-consolidating concrete (SCC) in many modern structures is an inevitable fact, the high consumption of cement in its mixing designs has led to increased production costs and adverse environmental effects. In order to find economically viable sources with environmentally friendly features, natural pozzolan pumice and blast furnace slag in 10-50% of replacement binary designs have been investigated for experiments on the properties of fresh concrete, mechanical properties, and durability. As a natural pozzolan, pumice does not require advanced equipment to prepare for consumption and only needs to be powdered. Pumice has been the main focus of this research because of simple preparation. Also to validate the results, in addition to the control specimens of each design, fly ash as a known powder has been evaluated. Moreover, ternary mixes of pumice and silica fume were investigated to enhance the obtained results of binary mixes. It was concluded that pumice and slag powders indicated favorable performance in the high percentage of replacement.