Investigating the effects of red mud and GGBFS industrial waste on the compressive strength of high-strength green concrete

The construction of green concrete is of utmost importance, due to its high compatibility with the environment, and also because of the reduction in the environmental side-effects related to the manufacture of materials used in concrete construction.

The current investigation made use of red mud and ground granulated blast furnace slag (GGBFS) as supplementary material to cement, in order to study their effects on the compressive strength of ordinary and early high strength concretes within various water to binder ratios (w/b). The required tests were designed using DX7 software, meaning to optimize the three variables of red mud percentage, slag percentage, and w/b ratio. Eighteen mixes were produced within 7, 28, and 56 days, according to the test design.

The produced concrete specimens demonstrated an optimized red mud and slag amount of 15%, 10% and 7.5%, 20%, with the w/b equaling 0.3 and 0.375, respectively, keeping pace with the standards of both normal and early high strength concretes, in terms of strength.

The optimized mixes obtained in the current study were able to achieve a strength of about 90 MPa. The above indicates the suitability of red mud and GGBFS as supplementary materials to cement.