A critical review of rheological models in self-compacting concrete for sustainable structures

Studying the rheological behavior of concrete, especially self-compacting concrete is vital in the design and structural integrity of concrete structures for design, construction, and structural material sustainability. Both analytical and numerical techniques have been applied in the previous research works to study precisely the behavior of the yield stress and plastic viscosity of the fresh self-compacting concrete with the associated flow properties and these results have not been systematically presented in a critical review, which will allow researchers, designers and filed operators the opportunity to be technically guided in their design and model techniques selection in order to achieve a more sustainable concrete model for sustainable concrete buildings. Also, the reported analytical and numerical techniques have played down on the effect of the shear strain rate behavior and as to reveal the viscosity changes of the Bingham material with respect to the strain rate. In this review paper, a critical study has been conducted to present the available methods from various research contributions and exposed the inability of these contributions to revealing the effect of the shear strain rate on the rheological behavior of the self-compacting concrete. With this, decisions related to the rheology and flow of the self-compacting concrete would have been made with apt and more exact considerations.