Mineral additives are extensively applied as cement replacement materials in
both construction concrete and mortar. Fly ash is one of the most commonly
utilized additives which improve rheological properties, as well as thermal
and mechanical behavior of mortar, and as such it has been widely
investigated. This industrial byproduct comprises heavy metals in its
composition; therefore further research is needed to optimize its effective
dosage. Moreover, certain sorptive clays, such as natural zeolite and
bentonite, can prevent migration of toxic elements from fly ash by
immobilizing them in their structure. Ten experimental mortars are prepared
with Portland cement, river sand and addition of fly ash, zeolite and/or
bentonite in accordance with chemometric experimental design rules. The aim
of the study was to investigate the effect of mineral additives on thermal
and mechanical performances of mortar. Thermal characteristics were
monitored via dilatometric analysis and DTA method. Principal component
analysis was used on the results of physico-mechanical testing (workability,
bulk density, water absorption, shrinkage, compressive and flexural
strength) to enable the divisions of the observed samples into groups in the
factor space. The performance of Artificial Neural Network was compared with
the experimental data in order to develop rapid and accurate method for
prediction of mechanical parameters of mortar. The ANN model showed high
overall prediction accuracy (r2 = 0.989, during training cycle). The test
results indicate that incorporation of the mineral additives gave cost
effective mortars with sufficiently good properties. However, tools of
analytical modeling highlighted mortar with zeolite and fly ash as the
optimal composition regarding its mechanical performance.
Influence of B4C and industrial waste fly ash reinforcement particles on the micro structural characteristics and mechanical behavior of aluminium (Al-Mg-Si-T6) hybrid metal matrix composite