Analysis of Compressive Strength Development of Ultra-high Performance Concrete

A numerical procedure was presented for evaluating the compressive strength development of ultra-high performance concrete(UHPC) with cement-silica fume-slag binder.This numerical procedure started with initial packing behavior of designed UHPC using a random sequential packing method.Furthermore,synergistic effect of combined mineral admixtures was addressed with respect to hydration heat.Accordingly,hydration degree of cement and reaction degrees of mineral admixtures were determined based on a blended cement hydration model.Finally,a compressive strength evolution model was proposed and the evolution of compressive strength of three mixes with different binder recipes was compared.The results showed that the both initial packing behavior of UHPC mixes and synergistic effect of mineral admixtures are critical for predicting the properties of UHPC.A remarkable void fraction of 0.2042 was observed for UHPC mix designed by optimization algorithms under random packing.Furthermore,a negative synergistic effect of the combination of silica fume and slag was obtained with regarding to compressive strength.In addition,for a given mineral admixture replacement of 20%,the formulation of mineral admixture should be carefully tailored where the UHPC incorporating 5%silica fume and 15%slag shows the highest compressive strength.