Improving the performance of architectural mortar containing 100% recycled glass aggregates by using SCMs

Experimental results suggested that strengths of glass-based architectural mortar incorporating SCMs (fly ash, ground granulated blast-furnace slag, metakaolin and waste glass powder) were comparable or even superior to that of the pure cement mortar when the cement replacement levels was up to 20%. In particular, waste glass powder (GP) as a pozzolanic material performed better than the other SCMs for flexural strength development of the glass-based mortar. The durability results also indicated that the addition of the SCMs could significantly reduce the drying shrinkage of the glass-based architectural mortar. All the recycled glass architectural mortars prepared with SCMs showed favorable resistance to expansion due to the ASR and less strength loss after heating to 800 °C. GP and ground granulated blast-furnace slag (BS) blended mortars gave better performance below 600 °C as compared to fly ash (FA) and metakaolin (MK) blended mortar. Also, the glass-based mortar containing GP exhibited the best performance of resistance to acid attack. Therefore, there is a potential to produce high performance architectural mortars with excellent mechanical and durability properties by reutilizing recycled glass to fully replace natural aggregates and partially replace cement.