Alkali-activated materials have the potential to replace Portland cement in certain applications. To better understand these binders’ properties, it is relevant to study their rheological behaviour at early ages, like in the case of Portland cement paste. There are already many studies on the rheological behaviour of these materials in the available literature, using fly ash, metakaolin, and ground granulated blast furnace slag as precursors. However, this study discusses the rheological behaviour, mechanical properties, and porosity of ternary alkali-activated binders based on mining mud waste, waste glass, and metakaolin. The precursor consisted of a volume mix of 70% of tungsten mining waste mud, 15% glass waste, and 15% of metakaolin. The activator was a combination of sodium hydroxide and sodium silicate solution. Five activator/precursor (A/P) ratios (0.37, 0.38, 0.39, 0.40, and 0.4) were studied. The result showed that the activator/precursor ratio affects the rheology of paste and their rheological behaviour fit the Bingham model. The relative yield stress (g) and plastic viscosity (h) increased inversely with the A/P ratio, while the workability increased proportionally. Furthermore, some empirical models are proposed to describe the characteristic of yield stress: plastic viscosity and spread diameter versus the A/P ratio and time with a correlation between the rheological parameters and the spread diameter. The increase in A/P ratio has also followed a decrease in compressive strength in all tested samples for all the ages. As expected, an increase of the porosity accompanied the increase of the A/P ratio.
Durability of alkali-activated binders: A clear advantage over Portland cement or an unproven issue?