STRENGTH AND DURABILITY PERFORMANCE OF FLY ASH BASED GEOPOLYMER CONCRETE USING NANO SILICA

With the increasing infrastructure development across the globe, the demand of cement  production increases day by day. However, the production of cement is associated with the emission of large amount of CO2 causing global warming. Scientist and engineers are in search of a green eco friendly alternative  for concrete production. Geopolymers are rapidly emerging as an alternative to Portland cement as the binder of structural concrete. In this respect, the fly ash based geopolymers  shows considerable prospect for application in concrete industry as an alternative binder to the Portland cement. Development of geopolymer concrete using class F fly ash brings many advantages like; enhancing workability, durability, better strength as well as lowering the price. There is not only a reduction in the greenhouse footprint but, also considerable increase in strength and resistivity to adverse conditions. In order to enhance the performance of Geopolymer concrete, the use of  Nano-silica is  found to be suitable and practiced by researchers.  Use of Nano materials as fillers in the concrete matrix has proven effective in increasing mechanical and durability properties. This research is based on performance evaluation of geopolymer concrete using different percentage of Nano-silica.. It was observed that Geopolymer concrete  with Nano-silica ( GPC-N)  shows good compressive strength as well as  durability under aggressive conditions. The materials performance were also investigated using X-Ray Diffraction technique. (XRD). Results show that the presence of nano silica  enhanced the performance of Geopolymer concrete with respect to strength and durability purposes.