Quality improvement of recycled aggregate concrete

The developments of recycled aggregate concrete pressing hard in construction activities; however, the limitations on their applications had never being ended. The focus of this paper is: i) investigating the waste management strategy in construction; ii) proposing the two-stage mixing approach (TSMA) to improve the quality of RAC; and iii) experimenting the TSMA and assessing the benefits possibly gained. It proposes a new approach in mixing concrete, namely, the two-stage mixing method, to improve compressive strength of RAC and lower its strength variability. The replacement ratio from zero to thirty is under experiment on their compressive strength. Based upon the experimental results, improvements of 31 % in strength at 28 days with 30% RA substitute was achieved. The effect can be attributably to the porous nature of the RA and the pre-mix process which can make some pores filled up resulting in a denser concrete and thus leading to higher strength when compared with the traditional mixing approach. Therefore, two-stage mixing approach can open up a wider application of recycled aggregate concrete.