An examination on mechanical behaviour of a cantilever beam produced with recycled aggregate concrete

The change in the demands of society through overconsumption needs more resources, and it causes excessive utilization of resources in the world. In recent years, as a result of consumption society, the accelerating urbanization has spearheaded excessive works of destruction and construction activities, and in the past the urbanization gave results in the production of large-scale of construction and demolition (C&D) waste. Also, urban renewal plans of different countries have affected this situation increasing the amount of C&D waste. Hence the aim of this study is to research the properties of RA concrete (RAC) containing silica fume (SF) to show usability of RA in concrete. In this study, a demolished building waste is used as RA in concrete with and without SF to examine the usability of RA and SF content 0%, 5%, and 10% in RAC. The natural aggregate and recycled aggregate are used in the concrete mixtures at various ratios. Hence fifteen concrete mixtures in three groups are produced, and mechanical and physical properties of RAC are investigated. Some codes, offers theoritical equations of elasticity modulus, are employed and the results are evaluated in the thesis. Also, using the some test results, a cantilever beam is modeled in a program which uses the finite element method to obtain the mechanical behaviour of the beam. Hence, the effects of silica fume, recycled aggregate and natural aggregate content at various proportions in the concretes on the mechanical behaviour of the beam is examined.