Research On Mechanical Properties And Thermal Conductivity Of Ceramic Concrete With Fly Ash Content

Invented at the beginning of the last century, artificial lightweight aggregate concrete iswidely applied and promoted in Europe, America and other developing countries due to its lightweight, good insulation fire resistance, strong shock resistance and other strengths. When it wasinitially invented, lightweight aggregate concrete was widely used in building insulation and allkinds of non-bearing structures; with the scientific and technological advancement, lightweightaggregate concrete itself also evolved. In the middle of last century, in order to reduce theweight of building, developing countries, represented by America, gradually applied thisconcrete to various high-rise buildings and large-span bridges and achieved good economicbenefits. Currently, in the era of promoting energy efficiency, lightweight aggregate concrete isnot only used in the bearing structures, but also plays an important role in the structures ofthermal insulation. In this study, globular shale ceramsites found in Sichuan are utilized toproduce ceramic concrete and experimental studies are conducted on the properties of ceramicconcrete with different fly ash contents.Firstly, various physical properties of globular shale ceramsite are tested to verify whetherit can be used to produce ceramic concrete. Then, the preparation of ceramic concrete is made.Due to its larger water absorption rate and faster water absorption, the pre-wetting processingmethod is adopted on ceramsites; Certain precautions are taken in terms of the characteristics ofeasy floating of ceramsites in ceramic concrete.Then, cube compression strength test is performed on ceramic concrete with different flyash contents to observe their compressive strength sizes at the7th day and the28the day so as todefine an optimal fly ash content. Meanwhile, MATLAB Software is used to fit the relationshipbetween the age of ceramic concrete and the strength to obtain the corresponding fittingfunction.The steel bar center pull-out test shows that the variations in bond strength of ceramicconcrete steel bar with various factors (including fly ash contents) are obtained and the bondstrength of ceramic concrete with the optimal fly ash content is analyzed.After the optimal fly ash content is obtained on the basis of compressive strength, theexperimental study is carried out to the thermal conductivity of ceramic concrete. After acomparison between ceramic concretes with different fly ash contents is made in terms ofthermal insulation properties by means of orthogonal test method and SPSS Software forstatistics, an assessment of the thermal insulation properties for the ceramic concrete with anoptimal fly ash content is presented.It can be drawn from the above tests that ceramic concrete with the optimal fly ash contentnot only basically maintains the original compressive strength, but also enjoys some improvement in thermal insulation performance. But there is one caveat that steel-bar bondstrength could be slightly lower. In this way, this study provides a reference forconcrete-saving and cost reduction in actual engineering practices. Meanwhile, the waste flyash from thermal power plants are also utilized, which not only promotes the environmentalprotection to some extent but also meets the requirements of sustainable development.