EVALUATION AND OPTIMIZATION OF PVA REINFORCED CEMENTITIOUS COMPOSITE CONTAINING METAKAOLIN AND FLY ASH

Abstract

Due to high consumption of natural sources in the production of cement, scholars have been studying alternative materials that can replace cement in the concrete. Metakaolin and fly ash are used by scholars for their chemical properties and filler effect as pozzolanic material. In this study effect of PVA fiber, metakaolin and fly ash in concrete samples are investigated. The number of experiments to be carried out was reduced to 25 with the Taguchi optimization method, in this research. In addition, the recommended mixing ratios were obtained by this preliminary optimization study. Taguchi optimization were applied according to the experimental test results. F-value comparison of each ingredients were analyzed via ANOVA to list the most effective factors on the strengths based on the Taguchi optimization results. Later Response Surface Design was applied to the output parameters of the ANOVA and Taguchi methods to obtain better and detailed clarifications of relations between the input parameters and the strengths.