Study on Utilization of Blast Furnace Slag in Concrete

One such type of by-product from the iron smelting industry is iron slag, which is formed from the blast-furnaces of iron industry. This blast furnace slag is used to make a cementitious material by grinding it into a fine powder, which is called Ground Granulated Blast Furnace Slag or GGBS. The same blast furnace slag is used to make a glassy granular product (GBFS) which can be used as fine aggregate. GGBS has cementitious properties and can be very useful in the design and development of high quality cement paste/mortar and concrete. GGBS cement is accessorial to concrete, within the concrete manufacturer's batching plant in conjunction with Portland cement, aggregates and water. Growing ecological limitations to the use of sand from river beds leads to search for alternatives mainly near the larger urban areas. This has brought in brutal strains on the accessibility of sand forcing the construction business to look for substitute building materials without compromising the strength criteria of concrete. Granulated blast furnace slag is one of the promising sustainable solutions as they are obtained as solid wastes generated while production of iron. Hence it eliminates the solid waste disposal problem and other ecological issues. Present experimental work explores the opportunity of using GBFS as replacement of natural sand in concrete and GGBS as replacement of cement in concrete. In our experiments it was found that both GGBS can be used successfully to partially replace cement in concrete by 55%.