Prof S. Suriya Prakash of the Castcon Lab of the department of civil engineering and his research group have developed an affordable special ultra-high performance fibre-reinforced concrete (UHPFRC), The Indian Institute of Technology-Hyderabad said.

The concrete was developed using locally available materials like cement, fly-ash, river sand, ground granulated blast furnace slag, micro-silica, water, steel fiber, polypropylene fibre and high range water reducing agent (HRWRA), it said.

The IIT-H said the concrete was two times less expensive than commercially available proprietary products.  Its cost was brought down by reducing the quantity of cement, fibre and replacing costly fine aggregates with less expensive locally available ones, the statement said.

IIT-H said the composition combined the best features of self-consolidating concrete (SCC), fibre-reinforced concrete (FRC) and high-performance concrete (HPC).

Complimenting Prof. Suriya and his team, Prof. B.S. Murty, Director, IITH, said, “Developing construction materials with improved strength using locally available raw materials is a creditable stride towards realizing our dream of Atma Nirbhar Bharat.”

Prof. Prakash, CASTCON Lab and Chandrashekhar Lakavath, research scholar, said, “The aim was to develop an affordable ultra-high-performance concrete using locally available materials and do a thorough material categorization to understand the behavior of UHPFRC in compression, tension, fracture, and direct shear. Several full-scale bridge girders made of UHPFRC were tested.”