CHAPTER-1

INTRODUCTION

Inter locking Pavers are the modern-day solution for low cost outdoor application.
Paver block is used in various applications like in street road and other construction
places. Paver block is solid unreinforced pre-cast cement concrete paving units used
in the surface course of pavement. They are high strength concrete precast elements
in various shapes, sizes and colors to suit the imagination of landscape architects &
nature's essence. By improving its abrasion resistance and flexural strength it can
be used in heavy traffic area and give surface resistance for higher life. Green paver
blocks are an eco-friendly method of making concrete paver block using geo-polymer
concrete, i.e., geopolymer concrete production technology can also applicable in
pavers production. Therefore, they do not easily crack, low cost, cement free, curing
free pavers can be produced. Polypropylene fiber is used in the construction industry
as a secondary reinforcement which arrests cracks, increases resistance to
impact/abrasion and greatly improves quality of construction. So fly ash-based GPC
pavers are good alternative to ordinary paver blocks. This paper study on the use of
fly ash based geo-polymer concrete in precast concrete paver blocks and compares
the performance with the commercially available OPC paver blocks of the same mix
proportions. The mix design with target strength of 40 MPa was developed to create
paver blocks suitable for medium traffic.

AIM OF THE PROJECT

STUDY ON GEOPOLYMER CONCRETE USED FOR PAVING BLOCKS

Abstract —
Paver block is used in various applications like in street road and other construction
places. Portland cement generates large amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) which is
responsible for global warming hence it is a greenhouse gas. And the concrete
paver block production consumes large amount of water and space for curing
purpose. The other great problem today is disposal of solid waste from Coal fired
thermal power plants generate fly ash and pond ash. This project combined
sustainability, curing free with waste management leading to a wonderful product
called geo-polymer concrete pavers.

SCOPE OF THE PROJECT

 The main objective of this present study is producing Geopolymer paver blocks.
  To develop geopolymer concrete of different grades using locally available fine and
coarse aggregate using fly ash as a binder material.
 Commercially available chemicals will be used for preparing alkali solutions for
activation of fly ash to act as binder material.
 This study was extended to find the comparison of compressive strength of
Geopolymer concrete to OPC concrete.

Need for The Present Study

The greatest challenge for any technology looking to be adopted in the construction
industry is fundamentally two- fold. They are the technological and engineering
aspects and the certification of the product in market. As geopolymers are made
from materials such as fly ash, ground granulated blast furnace slag, and metakaolin
etc., and these raw materials vary from source to source and batch to batch, they
require a large investigation in formulation and certification from each source.

When, concrete materials are used in construction it should be durable to withstand

a highly aggressive environment. In earlier days the strength of concrete was only
considered in the design mix procedures, but after the introduction of IS 456-2000
the importance is focused towards durability. Although GPC was introduced during
1970’s, no exhaustive research data are available towards durability.
CHAPTER-2 (LITERATURE REVIEW)
INTRODUCTION
A. General

The demand for concrete as a material of construction will increase as the demand
for infrastructure development increases, especially in countries such as China and
India. In order to meet this demand, the production of Portland cement must
increase. However, the contribution of green house gas emission from the Portland
cement production is about 1.35 billion tons annually or about 7% of the total
greenhouse gas emissions to the earth’s atmosphere. Furthermore, Portland
cement is also among the most energy-intensive construction materials, after
aluminium and steel.

Environmental issue has become a crucial issue in concrete industry. This is

mostly because of the emission of greenhouse gasses from the production of
Portland cement, a primary binder in making concrete. Many efforts have been
made to reduce the use of Portland cement in concrete that in turn will reduce
the greenhouse gas emission. Those efforts include use of supplementary
cementing materials and finding alternatives for Portland cement.
B. Fly Ash

Fly ash is an artificial pozzolana produced from coal fired thermal power plants
and for every 300 MW of power generated, about 500 Kg of fly ash is
produced. The annual production of fly ash in India is about 75 million tons. In
India there are more than 50 thermal power plants. The fly ash requires some
treatment before they used, but these facilities are not available in all the
thermal power plants in our country. Therefore, the quality of fly ash generated
in different plants varies from one another to a large extent so that they cannot
be directly used for constructions and a large portion of the fly ash is disposed
off in ash ponds. Due to these limitations the usage of fly ash is reduced. The
disposal of fly ash has become a serious environmental problem. This has
created the necessity for developing a new eco-friendly concrete where large
quantity of fly ash is used.

The following are the some of the problems that are solved when fly ash is
used in large proportions:

 It reduces the usage of Portland cement.

 It reduces the emission of CO2.
 The natural materials/resources like limestone, clay etc., can be
conserved, which are used during the cement manufacturing.
C. Geopolymer Concrete
Geopolymers are a class of binders manufactured by activation of solid
aluminosilicate source material with a highly alkaline activating solution and aided
by thermal curing. In the past few decades, Geopolymer binders have emerged as
one of the possible alternatives to ordinary Portland cement binders due to their
reported high early strength and resistance against acid and sulphate attack apart
from its environmental friendliness.

To totally replace the use of Portland cement as concrete binder, fly ash needs to be
activated, usually using alkaline solutions. Paloma described two different models of
activation of fly ash. In the first model, the material containing essentially silicon and
calcium is activated by low to mild concentration of alkaline solution. The main
product of the reaction is calcium silicate hydrate (C-S-H). On the contrary, the
material used in the second model contains mostly silicon and aluminum, and is
activated using highly alkaline solution. The chemical process in this case is
polymerization.

LITERATURE REVIEW

A. K.Ashokkumar and Dr. P.Partheeban (2017), describes the effects of

several factors on the properties of fly ash based Geopolymer concrete,
especially the compressive strength. The test variables included were the
age of concrete, curing time, curing temperature, quantity geo-polymer of
super-plasticizer, the rest period prior to curing, and the water content of
the mix. They concluded that compressive strength of concrete does not
vary with age, and curing the concrete specimens at higher temperature
and longer curing period will result in higher compressive strength.

B. Aaron Darius Vaz ., Donal Nixon D’ Souza., NoothanKaliveer., Satish

K.T., and Amar S.M (2012), Based on compressive strength attained in
this study, the paver blocks developed can be used for light and medium
traffic applications. From the flexural strength point of view, paver blocks
developed using fly ash and GGBS can be used for heavy duty or
industrial roads. The individual paver blocks absorbs water less than 7%
and the average water absorption is less than 6% which makes them
suitable for practical applications. Hence the paver blocks can be used for
general purpose applications.

C. BasilM.Mali., Renjan Abraham (2016), The GPC paver block attained

higher strength at 7th day than the OPC pavers at 28 days. The variation
of GPC paver block at 7th day strength to 28 day strength is very small.
So it can be concluded that the GPC paver attain early strength than OPC
pavers. GPC paver blocks have superior resistance to chemical attack
making them suitable for aggressive soils. Compressive strength,
Abrasive resistance & other most of them properties of polypropylene fiber
 reinforced geopolymer concrete at 28 days increases with respect to
increase in percentage volume fraction of polypropylene up to 0.2% by
weight.

D. Banupriya, Sharon John, R. Suresh, E. Divya and D. Vinitha

(2016),Studied the strength behaviours of Geopolymer concrete over
ordinary Portland cement concrete and focused to produce Geopolymer
bricks and paver blocks using the different ratios of FA and GGBS. The
results are as follows. GPCC with 50% sand and 50% quarry dust
produced maximum compressive, Flexural strength and Split tensile
strength, which is on a par with Ordinary Portland cement concrete. Thus,
this study reduced the cost of 50 % for sand and utilizes 50 % of quarry
dust, which are considered as waste product. GPC paver block using 75%
GGBS and 25% fly ash shows excellent compressive strength (up to
50MPa). Geopolymer bricks using 75% GGBS & 25% FA show excellent
compressive strength (up to 19MPa).

E. T.Subramani et al (2016) the purpose of the present study is to investigate

the behaviour of Fly ash based Geopolymer eco Bricks and its Durability, the
size of the bricks were adopted was 190mmx90mmx90mm. The brick were
cast with fly ash to river sand and eco-sand (silica sand) with the Different
ratios of 1:1.6, 1:1.8, 1:2 by weight. The optimum water/ binder ratio of 0.416
was selected as per available literature. The water/binder ratio is the ratio of
solution (NaOH and water) to fly ash. Bricks will be casted in this study under
ambient curing. Visual inspection of Geopolymer mortar samples did not
reveal any recognizable change in colour and remained structurally intact
though the exposed surface turned slightly softer. Through Optical
microscope, corroded surface could be seen which increased with time of
exposure. After exposure in the acid solution for 18 weeks, the Geopolymer
samples almost lost its alkalinity and showed very low weight loss in the range
from 0.54% to 0.28% of initial weight. Loss of weight was found higher for
specimen with higher percent of Na2SIO3. Results obtained in the present
study indicate that Geopolymers are highly resistant to sulfuric acid.

F. Gowthami MER (2016) in this experimental investigation, fly ash

geopolymeric bricks (230x110x75mm) were produced by dry hot oven curing
at 60ᵒC for 24 hours. The compressive strength of these bricks was
determined at the ages of one day. Test results have revealed that the
compression strength values of these bricks ranged between 5 and 15Mpa
with low water absorption. Since cement is hardly used, these bricks were
produced at affordable cost with reduction in emission of carbon dioxide.
Hence these bricks are ecofriendly and does not involve in global warming.
G. S. D. Muduli et al (2014) in the current research work effort has been made
to develop geopolymer fly ash building brick under atmospheric curing.
Geopolymer building bricks are manufactured by using fly ash and alkaline
soda based chemical activator solution in presence of sodium silicate and
water by maintaining different Na2O/(Al2O3 + SiO2) ratio. During this work
230 × 110 × 75 mm size fly ash building bricks are manufactured under
atmospheric curing. After 25 days of atmospheric curing the results shows
that the geopolymer fly ash building bricks with Na2O/(Al2O3 + SiO2) ratio of
0.038 attain a crushing strength of 8.5 Mpa, which is approximately equal to
the strength achieved by hot air curing at 90o C for 4 hrs.

H. Banupriya et al (2016) this study mainly focused on use of quarry dust on

replaced with river sand for making geopolymer bricks and paver blocks.
GPCC with 50% sand and 50% quarry dust produced excellent compressive
strength, flexural strength and split tensile strength. GPC paver block using
75% GGBS and 25% fly ash shows excellent compressive strength.
Geopolymer brick using 65% FA & 35% GGBS produced good compressive
strength.
I. Ananya. A et al (2015) an experimental Study were carried out on
230*100*70 mm size geopolymer bricks .Red mud, fly ash and micro silica are
used as binder material .Alkaline solution of sodium hydroxide and sodium
silicate were used in the geopolymerization process. Red Mud was used upto
50 % as replacement for clay. Micro Silica was used for strength
enhancement .The bricks had a compressive strength of 9.456 MPa for 50%
use of red mud. Water absorption was about 2.5% and showed very good
resistance against sulphate environment. The advantages are: good
compressive strength, elimination of curing, 100% replacement of clay by fly
ash and red mud.
J. Bennet Jose Mathew et al (2013) this study has been carried out on
development of geopolymer binder based bricks using fly ash, GGBS and
bottom ash. A mixture of sodium silicate and sodium hydroxide were used to
prepare the bricks which were cured at ambient temperature. The effect of
percentage of binder by weight, percentage of GGBS by weight in total
aluminosilicate binder materials, sodium silicate to sodium hydroxide ratio and
alkaline liquid to aluminosilicate solid ratio were studied using full factorial
design. Percentage of binder and ratio of alkaline liquid to alumiosilicate solid
ratio had significant impact on the strength of brick. Bricks were casted in
industrial site from the best mix obtained from factorial design experiment and
mechanical properties like compressive strength and water absorption were
noted.

K. Wallah SE, Hardjito D, Sumajouw DMJ, Rangan BV (2003) identified

the difference between the alkali-activated materials, such as cement
concrete, and the aluminosilicate polymer or geopolymer materials.
 Although both of these materials are the result of alkali activation, the
starting situations are different. In the case of alkali-activated materials,
the source material is activated by a mild alkaline solution (such as lime)
and the main reaction product is a C- S-H gel. The composition of the
source material essentially contains high silicon (Si) and calcium (Ca).
On the other hand, the source material for geopolymers contains high
silicon (Si) and aluminium (Al), and is activated by a high alkaline liquid.
The end product of this process is an amorphous polymeric material.

L. B Hardjito D, Wallah Se, Sumajouw Dmj, Rangan Bv. (2005), used

ground blast furnace slag to produce geopolymer binders. This type of
binders patented in USA under the title “Early High Strength Mineral
Polymer” and used as a supplementary cementing material in the
production of precast concrete products. In addition, a readymade
mortar package that required only the addition of mixing water to
produce a durable and very rapid strength gaining material was
produced and utilized in restoration of concrete airport runways, aprons
and taxiways, highway and bridge decks, and for several new
constructions when high early strength was needed.

M. Rangan B.V. Et Al (2006), carried out experiments on geopolymers

using two types of fly ash. They found geopolymers are fire resistant.
They found that the compressive strength after 14 days was in the range
of 5 to 51 MPa. The factors affecting the compressive strength were the
mixing process and the chemical composition of the fly ash. A higher
CaO content decreased the microstructure porosity and, in turn
increased the compressive strength. Besides, the water-to-fly ash ratio
also influenced the strength. It was found that as the water- to-fly ash
ratio decreased, the compressive strength of the binder increased.