High Performance of Silica Fume Mortars for Ferrocement Applications

Abstract

The current study deals with obtaining the high performance mortars to use in theapplications of ferrocement. The main problem that has greatly affected theperformance of mortar is the workability. A low water-cement ratio mostly resulted inincreases in the compressive strength and led to the enhancement of durabilitycharacteristics, but decreases in the workability.Workability becomes an important factors, as the mortar has to easily penetratebetween the layers of the mesh wires. A reasonably workable with high strengthcement mortar can be obtained by using a high cement content coupled with the useof silica fume and superplasticizers. In this investigation a series of compression testswere conducted on 50 mm cube and 150 ×300 mm, cylindrical specimens to obtainthe compressive strength and the stress-strain behavior of mortar with silica fume andsuperplasticizers and flexural tests were conducted on 50 ×5 0 × 200 mm prism toobtain the modulus of rupture. The results of this study indicated that the variation inmortar strength depend on the water-to-binder ratio of the mix and percentages ofcement replacing. The effects of these parameters on the stress-strain curves arepresented. The best replacement percentage of silica is 3% was concluded in thisstudy. From the experimental results a mathematical model has been developed topredict the 28-day compressive strength of silica fume mortar with different water-tocementitiousratios and superplasticizers percentage