Abstract
•Towards sustainable concrete through mix design of concrete.•Developing particle packing model (Faury model) to reduce cement content of concrete.•Prediction of compressive strength (Abram, Slater and ACI2000-I, Bolomey, and Feret models).
The packing density of a paste matrix and aggregates are considered vital physical parameters that affect the performance of concrete. One way to evaluate the compaction factor of concrete is to use Particle Packing Models (PPM). This approach can be considered one of the effective, sustainable paths that significantly decrease the environmental impacts of concrete by reducing the cement content (as a major cause of greenhouse gas emission) without mitigating its technical properties and enhancing the durability of concrete. There are several PPMs to design well-packed concrete. Nevertheless, most of the models have limitations because they are: used only for conventional concrete or part of the raw materials, outmoded, and require a complicated algorithm. Therefore, this study combined previous PPMs (Abram, Slater and ACI2000-I, Bolomey, Feret and Faury and modified Faury) to propose a novel framework that can overcome the issues that exist in those models. The proposed framework can be used for concrete made with and without supplementary cementitious materials and recycled aggregates and can be simply used and followed up by the concrete industry. The results showed that from 86% of the total mixes with similar w/cement ratios, cement content, and workability classes, the compressive strength of concrete mixes was higher than for those mixes prepared according to the standard mix design. The same conclusion was not shown in the remaining mixes (14%) due to the fact that they used a higher grade of cement strength than the corresponding reference mix. Furthermore, the results show that the proposed framework may significantly reduce the cement content of concrete without jeopardizing/compromising the compressive strength.