Sustainable Construction and Building

Materials—A Review on Performance

of Geopolymer in Concrete

M. Priyanka and N. Ruben

Abstract Concrete, the largest construction material in the world, is already

regarded as basic need of human being. The binding material in the concrete is
cement which comes from a non-renewable resource limestone. With the large use
of cement, there may be a scarcity for limestone in near future but the need for
concrete for the human will not end. Geopolymer, an alternative to the cement, can
be used in concrete to make it cement-free. Geopolymer is the material having silica
and alumina contents like cement and can be used as binding material using acti-
vators. This paper describes the review on geopolymer concrete elaborating the
various properties of concrete by adding geopolymer. A comparative review of
physical and durability properties was also presented between geopolymer concrete
and ordinary Portland cement concrete.

Keywords Geopolymer concrete
Durability
Physical properties

1 Introduction

The fast growth of constructions makes the cement industry to face the challenges
to meet the demand of people since it is the conventional material used as binding
material in concrete. As per the Indian statistics, the requirement of cement will
reach 550 million tonnes by 2020. This demand may increased by 25%. The main
source of cement is limestone which is a non-renewable source. The availability of
limestone becomes difficult due to an increase in production of infrastructure for the
next 50 years. The very well-known fact is the production of ordinary Portland
cement utilizes more amount of energy. The main disadvantage involved in the

M. Priyanka (&)
N. Ruben

Department of Civil Engineering, Vignan’s Foundation for Science, Technology
and Research, Vadlamudi, Guntur, Andhra Pradesh, India
e-mail: [email protected]
N. Ruben
e-mail: [email protected]

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019 245

B. B. Das and N. Neithalath (eds.), Sustainable Construction
and Building Materials, Lecture Notes in Civil Engineering 25,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3317-0_22
246 M. Priyanka and N. Ruben

production OPC is emission of greenhouse gases. The production of one tone of

Portland cement releases one tone of CO2 approximately [1]. Because of all these
reasons, there is a need for an alternative binder in concrete or a cement-free
concrete to get sustainable development. Geopolymer is the material having silica
and alumina contents like cement and can be used as binding material using acti-
vators. Geopolymer concrete creates a revolution in research field as unindustrial-
ized material around the world. Geopolymer is manufactured by activating the solid
alumina silicate materials with high alkali activating solutions.

2 Mechanism

Geopolymers are nothing but inorganic polymeric materials which are formed by
activating silica–alumina minerals with alkaline solutions. Geopolymerisation is
continuous exothermic reaction which involves three steps as follows: dissolution,
reorientation, and solidification. Means high alkali solutions used to dissolve the
source materials and then form three-dimensional polymeric bond structure con-
sisting Si–O–Al–O [2].
The schematic formation of geopolymer material can be shown as described by
Eqs. (1) and (2) [1].

ð1Þ

ð2Þ

3 Objective

1. To get a clear idea about geopolymer concrete.

2. To study the alternative binders to cement, effect of them on geopolymer
concrete.
Sustainable Construction and Building Materials … 247

4 Materials

Geopolymer concrete is the combination of silica–alumina source material and

alkali solution with coarse aggregate and fine aggregate. The source material is the
binder here. Role of binder plays by
a. fly ash [3],
b. ground granulated blast furnaces slag [4],
c. rise husk ash [4],
d. metakaolin [5] and
e. blended waste fuel waste [6].

5 Mechanical Properties

5.1 Compressive Strength

There are several factors which affect the compressive strength of geopolymer
concrete.
The increase in alkali content will increase the compressive strength and increase
in silicate content will decrease the compressive strength [7]. As in the case of
ordinary Portland cement, the increase in water to geopolymer will decrease the
compressive strength [8]. Curing temperature of 90 °C is required to get poly-
merization but beyond 60 °C will not increase the compressive strength of fly
ash-based GPC; an increase in curing time will increase the compressive strength
and polymerization [8, 9]. CaO content in fly ash was able to react with higher
molarity NaOH; this result gives more compressive strength. Curing by oven drying
at 70 °C gave the highest compressive strength which is 50% more than steam
curing [3].

5.2 Tensile Strength

As increasing of steel fibres Split tensile strength of geopolymer concrete increases

and another observation was that curing under normal sunlight gives yield strength
of 16 N/mm2 [10]. The tensile strength of geopolymer concrete under 90 °C curing
was 4.10 N/mm2 highest than the normal OPC [11].
248 M. Priyanka and N. Ruben

5.3 Other Properties

Modulus of elasticity of geopolymer concrete was much lower than the OPC [12].
Poisons ratio of geopolymer concrete can be enhanced 19.2% more than ordinary
Portland concrete [13]. But the creep and shrinkage of geopolymers concrete are
slightly lower than the Portland cement concrete.

6 Durability Properties

6.1 Alkali–Silica Reaction

Alkali–silica reaction will largely affect the deterioration of ordinary Portland

cement concrete in terms of strength loss, cracking, volume expansion, etc. It was
reported that whereas in geopolymer concrete, alkali content remaining in
geopolymer concrete after polymerization expansion is less than the ordinary
Portland cement concrete [14]. The geopolymer mortars will show out no cracking.
In slag-based geopolymer mortars formation of sodium calcium silicate hydrate
reaction [15]. To counter this, there was no considerable expansion in fly ash-based
geopolymer mortars [16]. Geopolymer mortars made with fly ash-slag blend
expanded less than 0.1% limit. As increasing slag content in the mix expansion
increases [17].

6.2 Acid Attack

Several authors have researched about the acid resistance of geopolymer concrete
and reported that extension of degradation depends on the concentration of the acid
solution and time of exposure. When a sample was immersed in 5% of H2SO4 for
30 days, the metakaolin-based geopolymer concrete loss its mass up to 7%. When
fly ash-based geopolymer concrete is exposed to HNO3 for 3 months, it results in
dense microstructure [18] and when exposed to 5% of H2SO4, it gives better
performance than OPC [19, 20]. GPC with POFA and pulverized fuel ash exposed
to 2% of H2SO4 for 18 months weight loss has been taken up to 8% while OPC loss
20% [21]. Slag based GPC results in 33% of strength reduction when compared to
47% in OPC while exposed for 12 months to acetic acid solution [22].
Sustainable Construction and Building Materials … 249

6.3 Sulphate Attack

Different sulphate components will give different affect on geopolymer concrete.

Sodium sulphate will not deteriorate the fly ash-based geopolymer concrete but
slight strength reduction observed when exposure to 5% of MgSO4 for 5 months
[19, 20]. Extensive deterioration takes place in case of fly ash–slag-based GPC
when immersed in MgSO4 for 3 months [23]. Weight loss is 2.4% and loss of
compressive strength is 2–29% while in OPC it is 9–38% [13].

6.4 Corrosion Effect

Half-cell potential of GPC was lower than the standard specific value for sever
corrosion after 91 days [24]; the results showed that GPC mix exhibits low-level
corrosion activity, and it will take 3.86–5.7 times longer time to failure than those
OPC concretes [25]. A comparative study has been done in between GPC and OPC
under marine environment for 21 days; the initial corrosion current measured for
OPC is 772 mA which is very much greater than that of GPC 71–91 mA [26].

7 Thermal Behaviour

Concrete has good fire resisting material; it is known that the residual strength was
20–30% when it exposed to 800 °C [27], whereas fly ash-based geopolymer con-
crete increased by 6%. Metakaolin-based concrete reduces the strength by 34%
[28].

8 Conclusion

1. Considering all the discussions, it is concluded that geopolymer concrete is the

good sustainable construction material and proved to be a good alternative to
cement, and thus, it reduces or eliminates the harmful effects caused by cement.
2. It can be used in several applications of construction; it is giving better results
than conventional concrete in every aspect like mechanical, durability and
thermal properties.
3. The geopolymer concrete can be successfully implemented by studying setting
reactions and curing process.
250 M. Priyanka and N. Ruben

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