An Investigation into the Use of Manufactured Sand as a 100% Replacement for Fine Aggregate in Concrete

Manufactured sand differs from natural sea and river dredged sand in its physical and mineralogical properties. These can be both beneficial and detrimental to the fresh and hardened properties of concrete. This paper presents the results of a laboratory study in which manufactured sand produced in an industry sized crushing plant was characterised with respect to its physical and mineralogical properties. The influence of these characteristics on concrete workability and strength, when manufactured sand completely replaced natural sand in concrete, was investigated and modelled using artificial neural networks (ANN). The results show that the manufactured sand concrete made in this study generally requires a higher water/cement (w/c) ratio for workability equal to that of natural sand concrete due to the higher angularity of the manufactured sand particles. Water reducing admixtures can be used to compensate for this if the manufactured sand does not contain clay particles. At the same w/c ratio, the compressive and flexural strength of manufactured sand concrete exceeds that of natural sand concrete. ANN proved a valuable and reliable method of predicting concrete strength and workability based on the properties of the fine aggregate (FA) and the concrete mix composition.