Mixture design approach to evaluate fresh properties of SCC made with various sands

The aim of the present paper is to provide a mixture design modelling to evaluate the effect of different sand types on fresh properties of self-compacting concrete (SCC). A statistical approach was used to highlight the effect of river sand (RS), crushed sand (CS) and dune sand (DS) as proportions in binary and ternary systems in SCC composition. The responses of the derived statistical models are sand packing density (SPD), T500 and J-ring. The resulting mathematical models are used to illustrate the variation of different responses in ternary contours plots with respect to the proportions of RS, CS and DS. This offers flexibility to optimize RS, CS and DS blends with tailor-made of a given property that suit a particular recommendations. Results indicate that SPD of RS can be enhanced by a 40% of CS and 30% of DS proportions. Moreover, it is shown that flowability, measured by J-ring, can be improved by the increase of CS and DS in RS-CS and RS-DS binary systems. Results also indicate that passing ability measured with T500 decreased with the increase of CS proportion and increased with the increase of DS proportion in binary and ternary systems.