Modelling the Strength of Mortars Containing

Fly Ash
Amarpreet Kaur, Shiju Joseph and Shashank Bishnoi

Abstract  The strengths of mortars with 25% fly ash substitution were modelled
using the chemical and physical properties of the fly ashes and Portland cements.
Parameters such as fineness, reactive silica, alumina content and degree of
hydration were related to the strength development of the mortars using analytical
equations that model the development of the microstructure. The equations were
fit with results obtained using ten different fly ashes. A good correlation between
the modelled and measured strengths was observed.

1 Introduction
Compressive strength of concrete is one of the most important factors in
construction. The construction industry is highly competitive these days and
has limited time and budget for mix designs. Furthermore, it is tedious to obtain
desired results in laboratory and technical staff must investigate several mix
proportions, though such model is of great importance in site operations and to
build structures without wasting material and time.
Fly ash is a residue from the combustion of the coal in thermal power plants
during the generation of electricity and ASTM C-618 [1] classifies into two
categories: Class F and Class C. In the construction sector, the fly ash is used in
the production of cement as an additive-material. It is widely used as an additive
material in cement and concrete. Fly ash is generally used as a replacement of

Amarpreet Kaur (y)

Indian Institute of Technology Delhi
e-mail: amarbhatti15@gmail.com
Shiju Joseph
K.U. Leuven, Belgium
Shashank Bishnoi
Indian Institute of Technology Delhi
© Bloomsbury Publishing India Pvt Ltd 2015
V. Matsagar (ed.), Materials, Design and Testing
ISBN 978-93-84898-71-7 3747
3748 Amarpreet Kaur et al.

cement, as an admixture in concrete and during cement production. It is seen that

fineness of fly ash has significant effect on the strength of concrete by replacing
part of cement [2-3]. Utilization of the fly ash reduces the environmental pollution
caused due to CO2 emission during production of cement, also reduces cost of
concrete and conserves energy [4]. Despite the benefits of fly ashes [5-6], Indian
standard allows to use upto 35% replacement, major part still goes to landfill. This
is mainly because of the unpredictability of its strength development and lack of
awareness of its advantages of mixing fly ash in concrete. Models that can predict
the strength of concretes containing supplementary cementitious materials can be
useful in saving time and cost of construction.

2 Materials
Ordinary Portland cement 53 grade was used. Ten different types of fly ashes
abbreviated as F1-F10 were used which are sourced from different thermal power
plants covered northern and central region of India. According to ASTM: C618,
Fly ash is divided into two categories i.e low calcium fly ash Class F (CaO <
Table 1 Chemical composition of cements and fly ashes
Oxides C1 F1 F2 F3 F4 F5 F6 F7 F8 F9 F10
SiO2 20.19 58.47 60.63 61.06 65.18 68.86 62.70 54.85 61.01 58.75 59.53
Al2O3 4.99 28.02 24.72 22.40 24.04 19.62 24.54 32.17 24.37 28.42 28.87
Fe2O3 2.95 5.11 4.86 5.41 4.43 4.7 4.69 4.97 4.59 4.76 4.94
TiO2 0.44 1.68 1.67 1.46 1.59 1.2 1.46 1.91 1.60 1.99 1.76
CaO 58 1.03 0.65 1.12 1.03 1.34 1.63 1.33 1.07 1.51 1.01
MgO 3.73 0.64 0.50 0.73 0.44 0.56 0.73 1.11 0.86 0.82 0.77
Na2O 0.34 0.05 0.06 0.20 0.08 0.11 0.17 0.23 0.13 0.11 0.13
K2O 1.03 1.50 1.56 1.65 1.13 1.14 1.37 1.49 1.84 1.33 1.33
SO3 4.3 0.07 0.16 0.07 0.10 0.11 0.06 0.09 0.07 0.06
P2O5 0.08 0.72 0.37 0.14 0.29 0.21 0.19 0.25 0.38 0.55 0.34
LOI 3.1 1.76 4.34 4.94 1.22 0.40 1.17 0.86 3.42 1.17 0.62
Reactive
27.98 35.22 38.98 28.9 27.96 29.96 21.09 25.89 30.46
Silica 22.1

Table 2  Physical properties of cements and fly ashes

Samples C1 F1 F2 F3 F4 F5 F6 F7 F8 F9 F10
Blaine’s Fineness 370 438 449.5 546.5 302 175 332 632 481 331 512.5
(m2/kg)
BET nitrogen 1.2 2.3 10.8 1.2 0.5 1.7 1.65 2.8 1.0 1.05
adsorption (m2/gm)
Specific gravity 3.02 2.15 1.68 2.09 2.34 2.14 2.16 2.35 2.17 2.11 2.15
Modelling the Strength of Mortars Containing Fly Ash 3749

10%) and high calcium fly ash Class C (CaO > 10%). It is cleared from the oxides
of fly ashes listed in table 1 that all the fly ashes used in this study are of class
F category which is pozzolanic in nature with no cementitious properties. The
chemical composition and physical properties of cements and fly ashes are listed
in Table 1. River sand was used for all the mixes as per IS 650. The specific
gravity of sand was 2.62.

3 Mixes
All the mixes were prepared using 0.4, 0.45 and 0.5 water to cement ratio. The
tests were carried out on mortar using 2.4 : 1 sand to cement ratio by weight and
25% of cement was replaced with fly ash for all the mixes. The compressive
strength was measured at six ages 1, 3, 7, 14, 28 and 90 days and cured under
water at 27° C.

4  Effect of Parameters on Strength

There are many parameters which affect the strength such as fineness, reactive
silica, CaO, alkalinity and SiO2. The model was developed to understand the effect
on strength. However, the multivariate analysis approach was used for modelling
the relationship between strength which is taken as dependent variables and the
independent variables surface area, percentage of CaO, SiO2, reactive silica, and
alkalinity of fly ash. It is assumed that the strength varies linearly with all the
parameters mentioned above. The linear regression analysis was carried out to
determine the coefficients

(1)

Fig. 1  Scatter of coefficients multiplied by average value of X

3750 Amarpreet Kaur et al.

Where, yi is strength which is dependent variable. a0 is a constant and a1, a2, a3,
a4 and a5 are the coefficients of the independent variables. i refers to fly ash type
and varies from 1 to 10 and x1, x2, x3, x4 and x5 are the dependent variables that
is surface area of fly ash, percentage of CaO in fly ash, percentage of SiO2 in fly
ash, percentage of reactive silica in fly ash and alkalinity of fly ash.
The coefficients were found out using gauss elimination method and the
scatter of the values of each coefficient is shown Figure 1.
The degree of effect is assessed from the product of coefficient multiplied by
average value of each parameter from experiment. By multiplying the coefficients
with the average value of variables, it seems that the effect of product is too small
to have significant effect on strength (Figure 1). This shows that only surface area
and reactive silica have significant effect on strength and the other parameters
such as percentage of CaO, percentage of SiO2 and alkalinity have very less or no
effect on the strength.

5  Models of Strength Development

Power’s model was used to predict the strength of mortar incorporating fly ashes
from gel space ratio. The gel space ratio defined as the ratio of the volume of the
hydrated cement to the total volume of hydrated cement and capillary pores.
(2)
Where, X is a gel space ratio, a and a1 are the constants

(3)

Where, ac and af are the degree of hydration of cement and fly ash. Vc, Vf, and Vw
are the volume of cement, fly ash & water respectively. Kc & Kf are the volume
efficiency of cement and fly ash.
The volume efficiency of cement is dependent on the degree of hydration of
cement and the phase composition. The microstructural program µic [7] was used
to simulate the effect of degree of hydration with volume efficiency published by
Kocaba[8]
(4)
The value of volume efficiency of fly ash (Kf) is unknown as the stoichiometry
of reaction of fly ash is still not clear due to the uncertainty in the density of
C-S-H and the reactions involved. So the value has to fit in the reasonable range.
Dividing numerator and denominator of equation with Mc+Mf

(5)

Where, Mc and Mf are the mass of cement and fly ash. By solving the above
equation and putting in equation 1,
Modelling the Strength of Mortars Containing Fly Ash 3751

′ 𝑎𝑎 1
⎧ 𝛼𝛼𝑐𝑐 (1 − 𝑓𝑓 )(𝐾𝐾𝑐𝑐 − 1) + 𝛼𝛼𝑓𝑓 𝑓𝑓 �𝐾𝐾𝑓𝑓 − 1� ⎫
′
⎪ 𝜌𝜌𝑐𝑐 𝜌𝜌𝑓𝑓 ⎪
𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆𝑆ℎ = 𝑎𝑎0 𝑤𝑤 (6)
⎨ ⎬
⎪ 𝑐𝑐 ⎪
⎩ ⎭

Where, f΄ is a percentage replacement of cement by fly ash. rc and rf are the
density of cement and fly ash and w/c is the water to cement ratio.

6  Degree of Hydration of Cement and Fly Ash

It is still not clear that that hydration of cement is controlled by either nucleation
and growth or dissolution. The scientific evidences showed the cement hydration
is occurred due to nucleation and growth but dissolution controlled equation gives
good fit. A c++ program was made to fit the degree of hydration with degree of
dissolutions into the function. It is assumed that rate of dissolution is uniform as
the cement particle hydrates [9] and filler effect is not captured in the mechanism
of dissolution. In current model, combination of both is being used to capture the
filler effect also. In this model, the particle size distribution is simulated first and
the effect of degree of hydration with the particle size distribution is modelled. It
can be fit in an equation of the type given below

(7)
Where, ac is a degree of hydration of cement and m1 and m2 are the parameters of
cement. r is a rate of dissolution of cement.

(8)

(9)

(10)
Where, m3, m4 are the fitting parameters for the particle size distribution of fly
ashes. rf is a depth of dissolution of fly ash and t is time. Af is the amorphous
content of fly ash. The values obtained from the calculations are shown in Table 3.

Table 3 Calculated coefficients for cements and fly ashes

C1 F1 F2 F3 F4 F5 F6 F7 F8 F9 F10
m1 0.4515
m2 0.7517
m3 0.545 0.380 0.427 0.410 0.233 0.629 1.200 0.591 0.588 1.0894
m4 0.637 0.720 0.672 0.691 0.860 0.613 0.366 0.623 0.606 0.4080
3752 Amarpreet Kaur et al.

6.1  Fitting Parameters

The degree of hydration was simulated with depth of dissolution by making a C++
program. The cumulative particle size distribution data was taken as an input.
For each depth of dissolution, the degree of hydration was calculated from the
reacted volume and remaining volume. A c++ program was made to fit degree

Fig. 2  Calculated volume efficiency of cement

Fig. 3  Actual strength vs predicted strength of Fly ash F5

Modelling the Strength of Mortars Containing Fly Ash 3753

of hydration with depth of dissolution into a function. The method of non-linear

least square regression was used. The modelling platform µic was used to find
the volume efficiency with the degree of hydration of cement and fly ash. The
cumulative particle size distribution was given as an input along with the cement
composition.
The above equations were used to fit to fit with the strengths of mortar
obtained using fly ash F5 at water cement ratios of 0.4, 0.45 and 0.5 and 25%
replacement of cement with fly ash at six ages 1, 3, 7, 14, 28 and 90 days [Figure
2]. The calculated coefficients are listed in table 4.

Table 4  Calculated coefficients of cement

a0 a1 a2 a3 a4 a5 a6 a7 a8 a9
67 2.2 13.14 193 0.37 0 1 550 1.2 2.5

Fig. 4  Actual strength vs predicted strength of nine fly ashes

The fit was done using one fly ash F5 and the same parameters were used
to predict the strength of other 9 fly ashes and the predicted strength of mortars
were compared with the experimentally measured values. It can be seen a good
predictions of strength as shown in Figure 3.

7 Conclusions
It is found that the parameters like surface area and reactive silica have significant
effect on the strength and other parameters have little or no effect on strength.
3754 Amarpreet Kaur et al.

The new model was developed which also considers the fineness of fly ashes
and cement ratio, to model the development of strength of mortars containing fly
ashes. It was seen good predictions of strengths at various water cement ratios and
ages of hydration could be obtained if the coefficients derived from one fly ash is
used. This simple model could be used to obtain quick estimates of strengths of
mortars and concretes containing fly ashes and to easily account for the variations
in fly ash properties.

Acknowledgement
The authors thank Lafarge Centre de Recherche for funding this research.

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