EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATIONS ON HIGH STRENGTH SELF COMPACTING CONCRETE BY PARTIAL REPLACEMENT OF CEMENT WITH BLAST FURNACE SLAG.

Concrete is the most widely used construction material because of its mould ability into any required structural form and shape due to its fluid behavior at early ages. Thorough compaction, using vibration, is normally essential for achieving workability, the required strength and durability of concrete. Inadequate compaction of concrete results in large number of voids, affecting strength and long term durability of structures. Self-Compacting Concrete (SCC) provides a solution to these problems. As the name signifies, it is able to compact itself without any additional vibration. However, wide spread applications of SCC have been restricted due to lack of standard mix design procedure and testing methods. It is gaining wide acceptability because no vibration is needed and noise pollution is eliminated. The construction process is safer and more productive.The mainadvantage of SCC is that it compact by its own weight which ensures the strength of structural members and reduce the duration of construction to some extent. Besides its advantages, the SCC is being suffered from high cost as it requires large amount of cement and chemical admixtures that act as plasticizers. In order to make SCC economical, cement can be partially replaced by some other cementitious material which are available at low cost. If we use industrial by products it may lead to cleaner and greener productions. This study presents the performance of M40 grade SCC by using Ordinary Portland cement of grade 53, fine aggregate from river sand confirming to zone-II, Crushed gravel of size 12.5-20 mm, mineral admixture named Ground Granulated blast furnace slag (GGBS)and chemical admixture named Master Glenium Sky 8234 used as a superplasticiser.