Experimental Investigation on Utilization of Blast Furnace Slag as Fine Aggregate in Pavement Concrete

Abstract

Concrete is the second largest consumed material by human kind in the world. In this modern era, cement concrete pavements are in demand as compared to bituminous pavements in highway projects. In the recent time, under ages of green technology, the waste utilization in production of concrete especially for pavements is major concern of study. Blast furnace slag is one of the major wastes produced from steel processing plants around the globe. Enormous quantity of blast furnace slag is produced from the steel plant; very little quantity is utilized in different civil engineering applications. On the other hand, sand being a natural resource and vast variety of its availability from river source, has many technical limitations in terms of quality for production of pavement concrete. In this paper, the effect of blast furnace slag (BFS) is utilized as a fine aggregate, as a replacement of sand to produce concrete mainly for pavement, is presented with the help of laboratory investigations. The laboratory program included characterization of materials including BFS and workability, density, heat of hydration, compressive strength and flexural strength of concrete with natural sand as well as with BFS. The results of laboratory experiments carried out on concrete, with respect to various grade M30, M40 and M50 mostly used in pavement construction have been reported. The experimentation results indicate promising use of BFS in concrete production by replacing natural sand, which definitely saves natural resource, as now days in metro cities artificial sand is utilized for production of concrete. This paper ultimately investigates a new material in the form of BFS for concrete in general and for pavements in particular.