Metakaolin bazlı jeopolimer bağlayıcıların 3 boyutlu bastırılmaya uyarlanması için mikrodalga kür sistemi uygulaması

Three-dimensional (3D) printing techniques of the construction materials such as contour crafting and additive manufacturing are being developed in the construction sector and replace the conventional building techniques used for generations. To achieve successful printing in large scale, it is necessary to develop advanced printing systems and compatible software. Another main challenge in 3D printing is to design a suitable material feasible with the requirements of the 3D printing in terms of its extrudability and buildability. It is also known that extrudability and buildability are also contradicting factors, as high workability causes more extrudability while the low workability provides more buildability. Therefore, the designed material should exhibit high level of workability as it is required to be extruded through the printer nozzle and sustain its shape without major deformation while subsequent layers are printed on top of each other. To obtain such structural reliability and applicability, fresh and hardened properties of the material such as tensile and compressive strength, static and dynamic yield stress obtained by rheological experiments, thixotropic behavior, flowability etc. should be evaluated. The goal of this study was to adapt metakaolin-based geopolymer mortar to 3D printing through a novel microwave curing approach. To achieve this goal, 3 types of precursor materials and 2 types of different curing regimes which are microwave and oven curing were utilized to enhance the materials' characteristic properties by triggering the rapid strengthening and buildability. The experimental design was established for samples with 3 different molar ratios (MR; 1.3,1.5 and 1.7) containing metakaolin, fly ash and silica fume. Samples were subjected to 3 different curing regimes: oven curing, microwave curing and hybrid curing (combination of optimized microwave and oven curing). Results showed that replacing a portion of applied oven curing with microwave curing in hybrid approach can increase operation speed and increase the rate of hardening. While the use of microwave curing in the geopolymer binders did not affect the alkali leaching, it increased the drying shrinkage in the material. Moreover, it was found that the samples can be hardened in 120 minutes once they are subjected to microwave curing while it was 60 minutes for hybrid curing. The use of microwave curing increased the green strength and dimensional stability without sacrificing from workability of the sample. Implementation of microwave curing improved the printability of metakaolin based geopolymers by affecting the buildability of the material. The outcomes of this study will pave a better design of set-on-demand geopolymer binders for advanced applications such as 3D printing by reducing the total duration of heat curing.