Mechanical performances and corrosion resistance of reinforced fly ash geopolymer mortars

The growing focus on issues related to the control of CO2 emissions, energy conservation and waste recycling pushes the construction industry to tackle the challenge of sustainable development. The production of ordinary Portland cement (OPC), main product of the sector, is one of the most polluting in terms of CO2 emissions, thus finding alternative binder is becoming an urgent matter. Geopolymers are largely investigated for this purpose, but studies concerning the durability of reinforced conglomerates prepared with alkali activated binders are only few. The present work aims at investigating the durability performances of steel reinforced geopolymer mortar samples based on carbon fly ash in comparison with OPC mortar. The effect of different Na2O/SiO2 molar ratios in the geopolymer mixes is evaluated in terms of mechanical and microstructural properties as well as corrosion resistance in a chloride rich environment. The obtained results show that under the same severe environmental conditions more limited chloride amounts penetrate in reinforced fly-ash geopolymers where a better corrosion behaviour is also detected up to a week of exposure for samples with a nominal Na2O/SiO2 molar ratio equal to 0.12 and 0.14. Instead, the corrosion resistance is quite similar to that of reinforced OPC mortar when a period of three months is considered.