Lowering paste volume of SCC through aggregate proportioning to reduce carbon footprint

The production of SCC (self-consolidating concrete) generally requires a fairly high paste volume, ranging typically from 35% to 40%. This is to achieve the high flowability, high segregation resistance and high passing ability needed. However, a high paste volume would lead to low dimensional stability and high carbon footprint. Hence, increasing the paste volume of an otherwise normal concrete mix is not a good method of SCC production. There is a necessity to lower the paste volume of SCC so as to avoid the adverse effects of high paste volume and reduce the carbon footprint. Herein, it is proposed to adjust the aggregate proportions to maintain the performance of the SCC while lowering the paste volume. Trial concrete mixes are tested to demonstrate how the paste volume can be lowered through aggregate proportioning. Overall, the test results reveal that with suitable aggregate proportioning, the paste volume can be lowered to as low as 26% and that the volume of aggregate particles finer than 1.18 mm has major effect on the passing ability of SCC.