Effect of sodium silicate on strengthening behaviour of fly ash compacts

This paper presents the work carried out for the improvement of mechanical properties of fly ash compacts by adding a binder. Here we added sodium silicate as a binder to the different weight fractions of fly ash, sand, gypsum and lime mixture and then compacted. These compacts were treated in normal water at different temperatures for seven days. Then compressive strength and microstructure for the different compacts were investigated. It was observed that the compressive strength of the fly ash compacts increased with addition of sodium silicate and the particles were dispersed and deviated from their globular equiaxed shape to multifaceted type in microstructure.