COMPRESSIVE STRENGTH AND MICROSTRUCTURE STUDIES ON CEMENT ADDED GEOPOLYMER CONCRETE

Geopolymer results from the reaction of a source material that is rich in silica and alumina with alkaline liquid. It is essentially cement free concrete. This material is being studied extensively and shows promise as a greener substitute for Ordinary Portland Cement concrete in some applications. Research is shifting from the chemistry domain to engineering applications and commercial production of geopolymer concrete. It has been found that geopolymer concrete has good engineering properties with a reduced global warming potential resulting from the total replacement of Ordinary Portland Cement.In this work, low-calcium fly ash-based geo-polymer and cement is used as the binder to produce concrete. The fly ash-based geo-polymer and cement paste binds the loose coarse aggregates, fine aggregates and other un-reacted materials together to form the cement added geo-polymer concrete, with or without the presence of admixtures. The manufacture of geo-polymer concrete is carried out using the usual concrete technology methods. To evaluate whether cement added geopolymer concrete can be cured as a normal concrete or not. The present study is about finding optimum percent of cement to be added to know the compressive strength. To study the microstructure of Cement added Geopolymer Concrete (XRD analysis