Producing lightweight concrete by using Scoria aggregates Available in Syria and study its mechanical and physical properties

This research deals with producing structural lightweight aggregates concrete (the density is less than 1920kg/m3 and compressive strength is more than 17.2Mpa according to ACI 213R-03) by using scoria aggregates. Several concrete mixes have been designed with different proportions of scoria aggregates. The cement content (c=450 kg/m3), the ratio (w/c = 0.36) were kept constant in all the mixes. Different tests were performed to determine some properties of product concrete such as density, compressive strength and splitting tensile strength. The density of product concrete was in the range of (1752-1917 kg/m3), compressive strength was in the range of (22.2-32.8Mpa), and the splitting strength was in the range of (2.3-3.2Mpa). The study demonstrated the possibility of production concrete achieved the Requirements of the American code ACI 213R-03 for structural lightweight concrete.

Mechanical properties of steel fiber reinforced lightweight concrete

Thepaper studies the mechanical properties ofsteel fibers reinforced lightweight concrete.This kind of concrete is produced by usingscoria aggregateswhich can be found abundantly in Syria. Thelightweight concrete mixeswere designed for three different percentage of steel fibers (0, 0.5, 0.75)%. Different tests were performed to determine mechanical properties of product concrete such as compressive strength, elasticity modulus, splitting tensile strengthand flexural strengthalso; the stress–strain diagram of produced lightweight concrete was established under compression. The results showedanincrease of the compressive, splitting tensile and flexural strengths reach up 16.9%, 25.6%, and 53.6% respectivelywhen the steel fibers were used. Also the results indicated the importance of using the steel fibers to improve the performance of concrete and change its brittle behavior to ductile behavior.