Durability of recycled aggregates concrete: a safe way to sustainable development

Fine and coarse recycled aggregates recovered from demolished masonry and concrete structures were utilized in the manufacture of new concrete mixtures. Three properties of these new concretes were analyzed: water absorption, total pores volume, and carbonation. The recycled concrete families were created by replacing parts of the natural aggregates forming families of concrete with 0%, 20%, 50%, and 100% of aggregates from recycled sources. The usual comparison between mixtures by comparison between behaviors of concrete families. This research shows that the mix design nomogram (NMN) is a new and useful tool that allows the researchers to compare properties and behaviors of different concretes. The results show that the family concrete with the highest pore volume and with the same compressive strength of 20, 30, and 40 MPa (2900, 4350, and 5800 psi) did not always correspond to the concrete family with the highest degree of carbonation. This experiment also showed that some compositional characteristics of concrete could have more influence on the durability that the traditional physical aspects. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.