The desing of fiber reinforced self compacting lightweight concrete produced with Bitlis pumice and investigation of properties

This thesis reports a laboratory work results on the design of fibre reinforced self-compacting lightweight concrete produced with Bitlis pumice and investigation of properties. In the thesis, CEM I 42.5 N type cement was used as a binder. Moreover, fly ash (FA) and volcanic pumice powder (VPP) were used as viscosity enhancing admixtures. In the mix design, cement was used in dosages of 400kg/m3 with mentioned powder admixtures in the rate of 150 kg/m3. In the design process, 4 steel and 2 polypropylene synthetic fibres were used having different lengths and aspect ratios. While volcanic pumice aggregate was been using as a coarse aggregate, natural river sand aggregate was used as the fine aggregate in the design process. With all these materials, 13 Fibre reinforced self-compacting lightweight concrete (FRSCLWC) were designed applying slump-flow, V-funnel and L-box tests. Designed FRSCLWCs were cured at the ages of 3, 7, 14, 28, 56, 90 and 150-days in standard water cure at the temperature of 23±2⁰C. After the curing process, compressive strength, flexural tensile strength and ultrasonic pulse velocity tests were applied at each curing day. Besides, some durability tests were also implemented after 28 and 90-curing days. High temperature, freezing-thawing, wetting-drying and acid resistance tests were performed to detected durability properties of designed FRSCLWCs. FRSCLWC design was achieved in 13 different concrete mixes (D1-D13) and identified their fresh concrete, strength and durability properties. As general result, an improvement was observed on fresh concrete properties with using of smaller fibres in the mix design. On the contrary, concrete series having macro fibres gave higher flexural tensile strengths while concrete series having micro fibres were giving lowers. The best results were obtained from the concrete series including macro steel fibres and FA while the worst result obtained from the concrete series containing polypropylene synthetic fibres and VPP. After the 28-curing day, all designed FRSCLWCs gained structural concrete properties. FA using in the FRSCLWC design gave the better strength and durability properties and VPP using followed it.