Experimental Investigations on the Effect of Copper Slag in Concrete

Abstract

Rapid growth in industrialisation is inevitable, as its contribution to the economy of a country is tremendous. One aspect which is easily forgotten is the utilisation of by-products that are produced as a part of the various industrial processes. In this study one such industrial by-product, copper slag, is utilised as a sustainable fine aggregate in the place of river sand which has remained the traditional choice for fine aggregate in concrete. With a decline in the availability of natural resources utilized in concrete, finding substitutes has become the need of the hour. Utilising industrial wastes that are generated in abundance and possesses suitable characteristics to replace the raw materials in concrete is beneficial in waste management and minimizes their disposal. newlineCopper slag is an industrial by-product that is obtained during the matte smelting stage of segregating the metallic copper from its ore. In the current research work, sand in concrete is substituted by copper slag. The properties of copper slag concrete were studied by testing ten mixes varying the copper slag content from 0 to 100%. The copper slag concrete was tested for its mechanical, durability and structural properties. The observations on workability of the mixes indicated higher slump values for mixes containing higher amounts of copper slag newline