Efflorescence of Concrete Products for Interlocking Block Pavements

Abstract

Today, a number of engineering structures and buildings are being constructed to match environmental and urban landscape. From an aesthetics point of view, occurrences of efflorescence on colored concrete, unfinished concrete and concrete products of these structures are critical problems. This research aimed to study and compare the efflorescence of concrete products that substituted cement with industrial by-products namely, fly ash, blast furnace slay and gypsum and normal concrete. Both concrete products and normal concrete were manufactured for paving application in the form of interlocking blocks. This paper uses the term “non-cement” concrete to refer to the concrete that is not using industrial cement. A methodology is presented that enables a quantitative evaluation of the total, soluble and insoluble efflorescence and this methodology was used to analyze both non-cement concrete and normal concrete specimens. The results show that the insoluble efflorescence of non-cement concrete is less than that of normal concrete.