Behavior of Real Scale Beams Manufactured with Electric Arc Furnace Slag Concrete

Abstract

We live in a consumer society that generates excessive amounts of waste. Innovative techniques to reduce these volumes of waste are therefore important lines of research in engineering. The Electric Arc Furnace steelmaking industry in the Basque Country produces almost 1% of global electric-arc-steel production. Although driving the economy, it also implies the generation of a huge amounts of waste that has to be managed within a small region. Concrete is an extensively used product, which can absorb notable amounts of Electric Arc Furnace slag but, at the moment, there are only applications for use in unreinforced concrete. In this research work, real scale concrete beams containing electric arc furnace slag concrete are manufactured, in order to study their structural behavior. Our results showed that reinforced concrete elements containing electric arc furnace slag can be safely manufactured using current design standards.