Laboratory Study on Strength Development in Cemented Paste Backfills
Publication: Journal of Materials in Civil Engineering
Volume 29, Issue 7
Abstract
Cemented paste backfills (CPBs) are widely used in backfilling underground mine voids. They are fine-grained mine tailings with significant clay content, with a small dosage of a general purpose cement (GPC) or pozzolanic binder such as blended cement (BC) containing slag or fly ash. This paper summarizes the findings from an extensive laboratory test program carried out to understand the effects of binder dosage and solid content on the strength development over 56 days of curing. Ten different mixes were studied using 80 specimens, and it was shown that the blended cement mixes give an early gain in strength and stiffness, along with higher long-term values compared with the GPC mixes. It was also shown that the , which is the ratio of Young’s modulus () to uniaxial compressive strength (UCS), values for the CPB throughout the curing period were in the range of 150–350, with an average value of 250. Two simple mathematical expressions were developed to express UCS as a function of time and the 14-day UCS value (). In the case of BC mixes, the relative effect of increasing the solid content or binder dosage was studied through separate UCS tests carried out at 28 and 56 days using 40 additional specimens.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
Acknowledgments
The authors appreciate the valuable contributions of Mr. Warren O’Donnell in the laboratory test work.
References
ACI (American Concrete Institute). (1971). “Prediction of creep, shrinkage, and temperature effects in concrete structure.”, Farmington Hills, MI.
ACI (American Concrete Institute). (2003). “Slag cement in mortar and concrete.”, Farmington Hills, MI.
ASTM. (2007). “Standard specification for portland cement.” ASTM C150-07, West Conshohocken, PA.
ASTM. (2009). “Standard test methods for particle-size distribution (gradation) of soils using sieve analysis.” ASTM D6913-04, West Conshohocken, PA.
ASTM. (2010). “Standard test methods for laboratory determination of water (moisture) content of soil and rock by mass.” ASTM D2216-10, West Conshohocken, PA.
ASTM. (2014a). “Standard specification for slag cement for use in concrete and mortars.” ASTM C989/C989M–14, West Conshohocken, PA.
ASTM. (2014b). “Standard test methods for compressive strength and elastic moduli of intact rock core specimens under varying states of stress and temperatures” ASTM D7012-14, West Conshohocken, PA.
ASTM. (2015). “Standard test method for slump of hydraulic-cement concrete.” ASTM C143/C143M-15, West Conshohocken, PA.
Beer, F., Johnston, E., DeWolf, J., and Mazurek, D. (2012). Mechanics of materials, McGraw-Hill, New York.
Belem, T., and Benzaazoua, M. (2004). “An overview on the use of paste backfill technology as a ground support method in cut-and-fill mines.” Proc., 5th Int. Symp. on Ground Support in Mining and Underground Construction, Tayler & Francis Group, London, 637–650.
Belem, T., and Benzaazoua, M. (2008). “Design and application of underground mine paste backfill technology.” Geotech. Geol. Eng., 26(2), 147–174.
Benzaazoua, M., Belem, T., and Bussiere, B. (2002). “Chemical factors that influence the performance of mine sulphidic paste backfill.” Cem. Concr. Res., 32(7), 1133–1144.
Boger, D. V. (1998). “Environmental rheology and the mining industry.” Proc., 6th Int. Symp. on Mining with Backfill: Minefill 98, Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy Publication Series, Brisbane, Australia, 15–17.
Boldyrev, V. V., Pavlov, S. V., and Goldberg, E. L. (1996). “Interrelation between fine grinding and mechanical activation.” Int. J. Miner. Process., 44(5), 181–185.
Chindaprasirt, P., and Rukzon, S. (2009). “Pore structure changes of blended cement pastes containing fly ash, rice husk ash, and palm oil fuel ash caused by carbonation.” J. Mater. Civ. Eng., 666–671.
Detwiler, R., Bhatty, J., and Battacharja, S. (1996). Supplementary cementing materials for use in blended cements, Portland Cement Association, Skokie, IL.
Doven, A. G., and Pekrioglu, A. (2005). “Material properties of high volume fly ash cement paste structural fill.” J. Mater. Civ. Eng., 686–693.
Fall, M., Belem, T., Samb, S., and Benzaazoua, M. (2007). “Experimental characterization of the stress-strain behaviour of cemented paste backfill in compression.” J. Mater. Sci., 42(11), 3914–3922.
Helinski, M., Fahey, M., and Fourie, A. (2011). “Behavior of cemented paste backfill in two mine stopes: Measurements and modeling.” J. Geotech. Geoenviron. Eng., 171–182.
Hibbeler, R. C. (2016). Mechanics of materials, Pearson, Upper Saddle River, NJ.
Kumar, S., Bandopadhyay, A., Rajinikanth, V., Alex, T. C., and Kumar, R. (2004). “Improved processing of blended slag cement through mechanical activation.” J. Mater. Sci., 39(10), 3449–3452.
Lambe, T., and Whitman, R. (1969). Soil Mechanics, Wiley, New York.
Mehta, P. K. (1989). “Pozzolanic and cementitious by-products in concrete—Another look.” ACI Spec. Publ., 114, 1–44.
Niroshan, N., Sivakugan, N., and Lovisa, J. (2015). “A review on use of pozzolanic materials and geopolymers in stabilizing mine tailings and dredged mud.” Proc., Int. Conf. on Geotechnical Engineering, Sri Lankan Geotechnical Society (SLG), Colombo, Sri Lanka, 375–378.
Öner, M., Erdoğdu, K., and Günlü, A. (2003). “Effect of components fineness on strength of blast furnace slag cement.” Cem. Concr. Res., 33(4), 463–469.
Patzelt, N. (1993). “Finish grinding of slag.” World Cem., 24(10), 51–58.
Rankine, R. M., and Sivakugan, N. (2007). “Geotechnical properties of cemented paste backfill from Cannington Mine, Australia.” Geotech. Geol. Eng., 25(4), 383–393.
Sajedi, F., and Razak, H. A. (2011). “Comparison of different methods for activation of ordinary portland cement-slag mortars.” Constr. Build. Mater., 25(1), 30–38.
Sivakugan, N., Rankine, R. M., Rankine, K. J., and Rankine, K. S. (2006). “Geotechnical considerations in mine backfilling in Australia.” J. Cleaner Prod., 14(12–13), 1168–1175.
Sivakugan, N., Shukla, S. K., and Das, B. M. (2013). Rock mechanics: An introduction, CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL.
Sivakugan, N., Veenstra, R., and Niroshan, N. (2015). “Underground mine backfilling in Australia using paste fills and hydraulic fills.” Int. J. Geosynthetics Ground Eng., 1(2), 1–7.
Waltham, T. (2009). Foundations of engineering geology, CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Materials in Civil Engineering
Volume 29 • Issue 7 • July 2017
Copyright
©2017 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Apr 4, 2016
Accepted: Oct 7, 2016
Published ahead of print: Mar 21, 2017
Published online: Mar 22, 2017
Published in print: Jul 1, 2017
Discussion open until: Aug 22, 2017
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Citations
Download citation
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.