Areej Gamieldien
University of Cape Town
About Areej Gamieldien
Affiliation
University of Cape Town
Innovandi Project
Core Project 10: Production and usage of carbonated or uncarbonated RCFines
Background
Civil Engineer from the University of Cape Town in South Africa with postgraduate training in the areas of deterioration science, assessment technologies, and renewal engineering with respect to civil infrastructure.
Research topic
My research topic is focused on investigating the feasibility of the use of untreated recycled concrete fines (RCF) produced from real concrete demolition waste as a binder replacement. This is done with the view to improve the circularity of material flows in the construction industries of developing nations such as South Africa.
Through this topic, I have done experimental work to investigate physical, chemical, and mineralogical properties of the RCF, as well as testing of the fresh and hardened properties of mortar and concrete made with these materials. Testing of the RCF properties includes: laser diffraction for particle size analysis, BET specific surface area testing, X-ray fluorescence (XRF), X-ray diffraction (XRD) (with analysis qualitative analysis completed using DIFFRAC.EVA), and thermogravimetric analysis (TGA). The properties observed in the RCF samples are then related to performance of mortar and concrete in the following: slump test, R3 test and isothermal calorimetry, compressive strength, durability index tests, accelerated carbonation, and bulk diffusion.