Development of alkali activated paver blocks for medium traffic conditions using industrial wastes and prediction of compressive strength using random forest algorithm

A Chithambar Ganesh; R Mohana; Parthiban Loganathan; Vinod M Kumar; Mehmet Serkan Kırgız; N Nagaprasad; Krishnaraj Ramaswamy

doi:10.1038/s41598-023-42318-4

Development of alkali activated paver blocks for medium traffic conditions using industrial wastes and prediction of compressive strength using random forest algorithm

Sci Rep. 2023 Sep 13;13(1):15152. doi: 10.1038/s41598-023-42318-4.

Authors

A Chithambar Ganesh¹, R Mohana², Parthiban Loganathan³, Vinod M Kumar¹, Mehmet Serkan Kırgız⁴, N Nagaprasad⁵, Krishnaraj Ramaswamy^{6

7}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Civil Engineering, Vel Tech Rangarajan Dr. Sagunthala R&D Institute of Science and Technology, Chennai, India.
² Department of Civil Engineering, Mepco Schlenk Engineering College, Sivakasi, India.
³ Department of Civil Engineering, Sree Vidyanikethan Engineering College, Chennai, India.
⁴ Northwestern University, Chicago, IL, 60208-201, USA.
⁵ Department of Mechanical Engineering, ULTRA College of Engineering and Technology, Madurai, Tamil Nadu, 625104, India.
⁶ Centre for Excellence-Indigenous Knowledge, Innovative Technology Transfer and Entrepreneurship, Dambi Dollo University, Dembi Dolo, Ethiopia. prof.dr.krishnaraj@dadu.edu.et.
⁷ Department of Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering and Technology, Dambi Dollo University, Dembi Dolo, Ethiopia. prof.dr.krishnaraj@dadu.edu.et.

Abstract

Geopolymer is an environment friendly construction material that could be synthesized using either the natural source or the industrial byproducts such as flyash and GGBS. The characteristics of the Geopolymer rely on the proportion of the flyash and GGBS and the concentration of the activator solution used. In this research work, the effect of partial replacement of flyash with GGBS in proportions such as 0, 10, 20, 30 and 40% is investigated. Also Molarity of NaOH are tested from 8 to 14 M and both the parameters are optimized. In this optimized Geopolymer concrete, the utilization of iron slag as a partial substitute for river sand in various proportions such as 10, 15, 20, 25, 30 35, 40 and 45% are investigated. The optimized Geopolymer concrete with iron slag is investigated for its performance as a paver block with incorporation of banana fiber in proportions such as 0, 0.5, 1 and 1.5 and is compared with conventional cement concrete paver block. The results show that there is a significant enhancement in the properties of Geopolymer concrete with the different levels of optimization and the utilization of natural banana fiber. The developed sustainable paver block was found to with stand medium traffic conditions as per IS 15658:2006. Further this study employed random forest (RF) algorithm for the prediction of compressive strength of geopolymer concrete specimens for the variable parameters such as molarity of alkaline solution, Flyash/GGBS ratio and partial replacement of river sand with iron slag. The performance evaluation parameters represented high accuracy of developed RF model. This research work unleashes a heft potential of Geopolymer concrete to develop economical eco-friendly sustainable paver blocks to the society through mitigation of environmental strain on the ecosystem.