• Computers and Concrete
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.327-342
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• 2020

The objective of this study is to manufacture environmentally-friendly synthetic lightweight aggregates that may be used in the structural lightweight concrete production. The cold-bonding pelletization process has been used in the agglomeration of the pozzolanic materials to achieve these synthetic lightweight aggregates. In this context, it was aimed to recycle the waste fly ash by employing it in the manufacturing process as the major cementitious component. According to the well-known facts reported in the literature, it is stated that the main disadvantage of the synthetic lightweight aggregate produced by applying the cold-bonding pelletization technique to the pozzolanic materials is that it has a lower strength in comparison with the natural aggregate. Therefore, in this study, the metakaolin made of high purity kaolin and calcined kaolin obtained from impure kaolin have been employed at particular contents in the synthetic lightweight aggregate manufacturing as a cementitious material to enhance the particle crushing strength. Additionally, to propose a curing condition for practical attempts, different curing conditions were designated and their influences on the characteristics of the synthetic lightweight aggregates were investigated. Three substantial features of the aggregates, specific gravity, water absorption capacity, and particle crushing strength, were measured at the end of 28-day adopted curing conditions. Observed that the incorporation of thermally treated kaolin significantly influenced the crushing strength and water absorption of the aggregates. The statistical evaluation indicated that the investigated properties of the synthetic lightweight aggregate were affected by the thermally treated kaolin content more than the kaoline type and curing regime. Utilizing the thermally treated kaolin in the synthetic aggregate manufacturing lead to a more than 40% increase in the crushing strength of the pellets in all curing regimes. Moreover, two numerical formulations having high estimation capacity have been developed to predict the crushing strength of such types of aggregates by using soft-computing techniques: gene expression programming and artificial neural networks. The R-squared values, indicating the estimation performance of the models, of approximately 0.97 and 0.98 were achieved for the numerical formulations generated by using gene expression programming and artificial neural networks techniques, respectively.

• Advances in concrete construction
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.183-193
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• 2020

The present investigation is to identify an optimum mix combination amongst 28 different types of artificial lightweight aggregates by pelletization method with aggregate properties. Artificial aggregates with different combinations were manufactured from fly ash, cement, hydrated lime, ground granulated blast furnace slag (GGBFS), silica fume, metakaolin, sodium bentonite and calcium bentonite, at a standard 17 minutes pelletization time, with 28% of water content on a weight basis. Further, the artificial aggregates were air-dried for 24 hours, followed by hardening through the cold-bonding (water curing) process for 28 days and then testing with different physical and mechanical properties. The results found the lowest impact strength value of 16.5% with a cement-hydrated lime (FCH) mix combination. Moreover, the lowest water absorption of 16.5% and highest individual pellet crushing strength of 36.7 MPa for 12 mm aggregate with a hydrated lime-GGBFS (FHG) mix combination. The results, attained from different binder materials, could be helpful for manufacturing high strength artificial aggregates.