Low Cement/High Fly Ash Concretes: Their Properties and Response to Chemical Admixtures

Abstract

In practice, the amount of fly ash added to portland cement concrete varies depending upon the desired end properties of the concrete. Generally, when a given portland cement concrete is redesigned to include fly ash, between 10 and 50% of the cement is replaced by a volume of fly ash equal to that of the cement. Sometimes as much as twice the volume of the cement replaced, although 45.4 kg (100 lbs) of cement will only produce enough calcium hydroxide during its reaction with water to react with about 9 kg (20 lbs) of a typical fly ash. The combination of large amounts of certain fly ashes with small amounts of portland cement in concrete has been found to produce surprisingly high compressive strengths, which cannot be accounted for by the conventional “pozzolanic reaction”. Ratios of cement to fly ash as high as 1:15 by weight can produce compressive strengths of 20.7 MPa (3,000 psi) at I day and over 41.4 MPa (6,000 psi) at 28 days. Methods of identifying these “hyperactive” fly ashes along with some of the startling results, with and without chemical admixtures are described.