ADVANCES IN CONCRETE CONSTRUCTION, cilt.6, sa.2, ss.159-175, 2018 (SCI-Expanded)
The main aim of this study is to investigate the possible effects of metakaolin on strength and durability properties of concrete. For this purpose, concrete mixtures are produced by substituting cement with metakaolin 0, 5, 10 and 20% by weight. The amount of binder for the concrete mixtures are 300 and 400 kg/m(3) with a constant water to cement ratio of 0.6. Compressive and bending strengths, freeze-thaw and high-temperature resistances, capillary coefficients and rapid chloride permeability properties were determined and compared each other. Because of all the experiments conducted, it has been found that the use of metakaolin as a pozzolanic additive in concrete have positive effects especially on compressive and bending strengths, capillary, rapid chloride permeability, freeze-thaw resistance, and high temperatures, up to 800 degrees C. The results indicated that the performance of concrete can be enhanced by metakaolin. Particularly, compressive strength and durability properties have found to be improved with increasing metakaolin content which is attributed to pozzolanic activity and filler effect. Furthermore, metakaolin has relatively positive impacts under elevated temperatures and freeze-thaw effects. However, almost all the strengths of entire concrete specimens are lost at 800 degrees C. Consequently, the optimum metakaolin substitution ratio can be suggested to be 20% as per this study.