Identification Fluidity Method to Determine Suitability of Weathered and River Sand for Constructions Purposes

Abstract

At present, in order to comply with the development of the “the Belt and Road Initiatives”, the country is accelerating the pace of construction and increasing the demand for construction river sand. However, the quality of construction river sand is uncontrollable, and its shape is very similar to that of weathered sand. Therefore, using inferior weathered sand and mixed sand as inferior substitute sand in the market is prohibited, resulting in an increase in the difficulty coefficient of quality control of concrete fine aggregate in actual projects. This lays hidden dangers for the construction quality of the project. It is urgent to improve the quality control, testing, and detection process of river sand. Due to the long-term weathering of weathered sand, its density is small, and there are many pores, which leads to the material’s water absorption rate is higher than that of standard sand and river sand during fluidity tests. This paper takes this as a breakthrough point, reveals the variation law of fluidity loss under different variables, and explores a method for effectively screening low-quality sand and gravel. Through the silt content test (screening and washing method), the low-quality sand is preliminarily screened out, the mortar ratio is designed, and the fluidity test is carried out to compare the difference in fluidity loss of different types of mortar; determine the loss threshold range (mobility loss ≤ 15 mm) according to the mobility test results of the control group, and determine the qualification standard by comparing the measured mobility loss of the unknown sample with the loss threshold range. When the mobility loss is within the loss threshold range, the sample is qualified river sand. Otherwise, it is weathered sand or chowder sand. This method establishes a complete detection scheme for distinguishing weathered sand and river sand through mud content tests and mobility loss tests, solves the difficult problem of river sand quality control in engineering applications, and effectively eliminates the phenomenon of using low-quality weathered sand as river sand in the sand and gravel material market, thus avoiding congenital defects in concrete homogeneity.