Experimental evaluation of the performance of self-compacting concrete contains nano clay and nano egg shell

The rising prices of landfills and the lack of cement production are motivating researchers to be more interested in using wastes to produce concrete mixtures materials. The use of waste materials such as eggshell and matakoline waste not only reduces landfill costs and space, but also reduces the cost of cement production for the concrete mixture. However, recycling waste materials has become critical in order to effectively manage environmental sustainability. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the appropriate properties of self-compacting concrete (SCC) by incorporating waste materials such as crushed ceramics as coarse aggregate and nano egg shell (NES) and nanoclay (NC) as cement replacements. Fresh properties of SCC, such as segregation, flow time and diameter, V-funnel, H2/H1 ratio, and fresh unit weight of concrete mixtures, as well as hardened properties, such as 7, 14, and 28 days compressive strength and 28 and 90 days flexural strength, were measured for this purpose. The presence of NC in the SCC mixture enhanced the compressive strength of the concrete when 5% of NES was added or in the case without the addition of NES compared to the control mixture. The flexural strength enhanced with the incorporation of NC in the SCC increased the flexural strength of the concrete compared to the control mixture, but the incorporation of 5% of NES decreased the flexural strength compared to the mixtures with NC. These results prove the possibility of using crushed ceramics as the coarse aggregate, and NES and NC as substitutes for 5, 7, and 10% of the cement in SCC, because the properties of such SCC in hardened and fresh states are satisfactory.