Study on the Effect of Supplementary Cementitious Material on the Regeneration Performance of Waste Fresh Concrete

Abstract

In the preparation of ready-mixed concrete, it is inevitable to produce waste fresh concrete (WFC). An efficient, low-cost and environmentally friendly recycling scheme is the key to WFC recycling. In this work, we directly added some unhardened WFC to fresh concrete to prepare recycled fresh concrete (RFC); on this basis, fly ash (FA) and nano-silica (NS) were added as supplementary cementitious material (SCM) to obtain modified recycled fresh concrete (RFC-SF). Then, the mechanical properties, slump, freeze–thaw resistance, phase structure of the hydration products and hydration process in RFC were studied. The results show that the addition of FA and NS significantly improved the comprehensive performance of RFC. Compared with RFC, the compressive strength of RFC-SF with 15% FA and 3% NS increased by 15.2% and 50.3% at 7 d and 90 d, respectively, and the splitting tensile strength increased by 20.5% and 76.4%, respectively. The slump remained above 155 mm, and the mass loss rate decreased by 42.6% after freeze–thaw cycles. XRD and FTIR analysis showed that the addition of FA and NS accelerated the hydration reaction process of RFC-SF, reduced the content of calcium hydroxide (CH) and refined the grain size of CH. RFC-SF had a denser microstructure and a lower calcium-silicon ratio in SEM and EDS tests.