CLC (Cellular Lightweight Concrete) is an alternative to traditional concrete with lower masonry material requirements. It has many benefits including energy savings, environmental impact reduction & increased acoustic insulating properties. It is also much easier to handle due to its lightweight. It requires less sand, cement & other aggregates for bonding compared to conventional concrete. This makes it much cheaper to manufacture & transport. Furthermore, as the blocks are lighter, their dead load is reduced significantly by hundreds of ton in a high rise structure, thus saving on the amount of steel needed. This in turn reduces the cost of foundations & increases the structural efficiency of the building.
One of the challenges with clc is that its strength decreases as the density increases, but this can be overcome by using a mix design with the appropriate ingredients. The optimum clc mix design has a certain percentage of fly ash and silica fume to provide the desired mechanical properties.
The experimental tests with a uniform load on the surface of the specimens show that the addition of silica fume increases the compressive strength of clc foam concrete. The results are validated by numerical analysis with the London University Structural Analysis System (LUSAS) Version 19 software. The results obtained from the numerical analysis are in agreement with the experimental test results and indicate that the optimum clc mix design is made up of 50% silica fume and 25% fly ash.
As a generalization, the expected compressive strengths for different densities can be seen from the table below. However, this should be verified with actual testing in each case as local materials, equipment, slurry preparation and quality control can produce wide variations for a given mix design.
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