Affiliation

• ¹Dept. of Civil Engineering, Curtin University, P.O. Box U1987, Perth, WA 6102, Australia.
• ²Dept. of Civil Engineering, Tshwane University of Technology, Private Bag X680, Pretoria 0001, South Africa.

Corresponding Author

Alireza Rezagholilou, Dept of Civil Engineering, Curtin University., P.O. Box U1987, Perth, WA 6102, Australia; E-mail: rezagholilou@postgrad.curtin.edu.au 

Citation

Rezagholilou. A ., et al. Effects of nano-silica on cement-fly ash modified crushed rock base materials.(2015) J Nanotech Mater Sci 2(1): 6-11.

Copy rights

© 2015 Rezagholilou. A. This is an Open access article distributed under the terms of Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Keywords

Abstract

  Cement modification of Crushed Rock Base (CRB) material is required to improve some characteristics such as water susceptibility or stiffness. This kind of soil stabilisation can be more effective if other pozzolanic products can also contribute to the mixture to achieve the desired aims. In this research, both of fly ash and nano-silica material was added to a CRB material to investigate the variation of design parameters and internal microstructures. Fly ash particles are often coarser than nano-silica particles, thus the presence of these produces provide a broad range of particle size distributions of pozzolanic material in cement modified CRB material. The benefit of this idea is generation of less porous material with high strength which is favorable.
  Thus, different trial batches of this material were subjected to resilient modulus (Mr) and Unconfined Compressive Strength (UCS) to study the changes in design parameters. Furthermore, different techniques of scanning electron microscopy (SEM) imaging methods were utilized to investigate the micro structural changes of hydration products.