Development of fly ash based geopolymer foam concrete properties

Geopolymer technology is an area that is considered to be an alternative to cement and cement-based building materials and is increasingly popular. It comes to the fore, especially because it is a method that can provide the recycling of wastes that occur in large quantities in the industry, such as fly ash and blast furnace slag, and contribute to the circular economy. In this thesis, the potential of fly ash, which is released every year in millions of tons of geopolymer foam concrete, has been investigated. Within the research scope, 54 different recipes were created through the experimental design program, and the effects of fly ash amount, molarity, curing temperature, calcium stearate amount, hydrogen peroxide amount and perlite amount on the mechanical and physical properties of geopolymer foam were investigated. It is among the crucial findings that drying shrinkage, which is one of the biggest obstacles developing geopolymer technology, can be reduced with calcium stearate used as an additive. In this study, where homogeneous foam distribution was ensured, and the pore sizes could be easily controlled, geopolymer foam concrete with 350kg/ m3 density value,> 1.0 MPa strength, and 0.089W/mK thermal conductivity was produced.