An Experimental Investigation on Strength Properties of Concrete with Nano Silica Using Manufactured Sand

摘要

Concrete is the most widely used material of construction all over the world. In India, the conventional concrete is mostly produced by using natural sand which is obtained from the riverbeds. One of the important ingredients of conventional concrete is natural sand or river sand. This sand plays a vital role as fine aggregate. However, due to the increased use of concrete in almost all types of construction works, the demand of natural or river sand has been increased. Thus, to meet these increased demands of construction industry, excessive quarrying of sand from river beds is taking place causing the shortage of natural sand. This scarcity of natural sand due to such heavy demands in growing construction activities have forced engineers to find a suitable substitute. One of the cheapest and the easiest ways of getting substitute for natural sand is by crushing natural stone to get artificial sand of desired size and grade. The use of artificial sand will conserve the natural resources for sustainable development of the concrete in construction industry. Hence the practice of replacing river sand with M-Sand is taking a tremendous growth. In the present investigation the ordinary portland cement is partially replaced with nano silica by 2% and natural sand is replaced with manufactured sand in different proportions of 0%,25%,50%,75%,100%. Here the workability and strength parameters were considered. The workability parameters includes slump cone method and compaction factor method. The strength parameters deals with compressive, split tensile, flexural strengths which comes under destructive tests.