An overview of sustainable concretes with maximized aggregate content: natural limestone versus steel making slags

Abstract

The conversion of various industrial by-products from Spanish factories into co-products used in partial substitution of cement and concrete aggregate has been extensively studied since the 1990s. Building on that research effort, the present investigation is focused on improving the packing density of concrete aggregates, with special emphasis on two central objectives: firstly, the reduction of cement and natural aggregate content within concrete; secondly, the validation of their substitution by Electric Arc Furnace Slag (black-slag) aggregate. To do so, several experimental campaigns were conducted, in which 4 compaction procedures were applied under dry conditions to: 4 sieved fractions of natural limestone and 3 sieved fractions of black-slag aggregates. The physical properties of the 7 sieved fractions had previously been characterized and compared with theoretical models, in order to validate their dosing in the experimental tests: Fuller curve, Funk and Dinger curve, Compressible Packing Model, and the 3-Parameter Packing model. The aggregate-packing densities were experimentally and theoretically studied with dry methods. Our findings showed that, unlike natural aggregates, other methods based on aggregate shape are preferable for black-slag mixtures, due to the specific textures and their abrupt particle contours. The conclusions from the investigations were that both the Compressible Packing Model and the 3-Parameter Packing models produced valuable packing-density predictions for the binary mixes.