Crumb rubber geopolymer mortar at elevated temperature exposure

Low calcium fly ash is used as the main material in the mixture and the crumb rubber was used in replacing fine aggregates in geopolymer mortar. Sodium hydroxide (NaOH) and sodium silicate (Na2SiO3) which were high alkaline solution were incorporated as the alkaline solution. The fly ash reacted with the alkaline solution forming alumino-silicate gel that binds the aggregate to produce a geopolymer mortar. The loading of crumb rubber in the fly ash based geopolymer mortar was set at 0% (CRGM-0), 5% (CRGM-5), 10% (CRGM-10), 15% (CRGM-15), and 20% (CRGM-20), respectively. NaOH solution (12M) and Na2SiO3 solution ratio is set constant at 2.5 for all geopolymer mixture and the fly ash to alkali activator ratio was kept at 2.0. The CRGM at 28 days of curing time was exposed to elevated temperature at 200ºC, 400ºC, 600ºC and 800ºC. The weight loss of the CRGM increases with increasing temperature at all elevated temperatures. However, the density and compressive strength of CRGM decrease with an increase of crumb rubber loading for all elevated temperature exposure. The compressive strength of CRGM reduced due to the fact that rubber decomposes between 200ºC and 600ºC thereby creating voids. CRGM-15 and CRGM-20 showed cracks developed with rough surface at 800ºC. Image obtained from scanning electron microscope (SEM) showed that, the CRGM changed significantly due to the decomposition of crumb rubber and evaporation of the free water at 400ºC, 600ºC and 800ºC.