On the Implementation of the Eco-Friendly Geopolymer Concrete Incorporating Autoclaved Aerated Block Waste Aggregate; Experimental Assesment and AI Modeling

Abstract

Geopolymer mixtures offer an enhanced alternative to implement an eco-friendly solution in construction industry. These mixtures exhibit similar or better mechanical and structural properties in comprising of cement and can use recycling and by-product materials. Against this background, an eco-friendly advantageous were achieved from the engineers and researchers by using waste materials to replace cement and attention to reduce CO₂ emission during its procedure. Therefore, an eco-friendly geopolymer concrete (GPC) incorporating autoclaved aerated block waste (AABW) aggregate with Na₂SiO₃ / NaOH =1/5 and molarity=12 were developed. Moreover, the geopolymer mixtures were exposed to elevated temperature between 200 and 800 ⁰C. Then, the post-fire evaluation, mechanical behaviour and micro structure analysis were investigated. The proposed research presented that the fibers slightly decreased the compressive strength of GPC and the 1.25% PP fibres displayed the least performance, i.e. around 13% decrease, compared to the unreinforced mixtures. Post-fire behaviour of mixtures exhibit that the compressive strength of eco-friendly GPC containing AABW aggregate increased first for all mixes but in the range of 400 - 800°C it decreased at a higher rate due to the dehydration of the geopolymer matrix. Besides, the melting of the fibres due to high temperature and the thermal reaction mechanism of free water evaporation causes the reduction on mechanical properties by a temperature range of 400°C to 800°C. At the second step, the machine learning techniques (e.g., multilayer perceptron neural network and M5 prime) were used for modeling of the compressive, tensile strength and module of elasticity of eco-friendly GPC containing AABW aggregate.