Sustainable construction system with Egyptian metakaolin based geopolymer concrete sandwich panels

As one of the largest environmental offenders, the construction industry is a prime candidate for the application of the principles of sustainability. Sustainability could be achieved by using environment friendly materials and structural systems in construction industry. This paper aimed to study using geopolymer concrete as a structural board in constructing insulation sandwich panels under different types of loading. Four compression tests were performed on wall specimens in order to study the behavior of the panels under vertical in plane forces. Axial capacity prediction of wall panels was discussed using four published design equations. Eight one-way slab sandwich panels specimens were tested under flexure loading with different shear span ratios in order to compare the flexural behavior of conventional concrete and geopolymer concrete sandwich panels. The capacities of the slab panels were estimated using the conventional concrete codes provisions and compared to the experimental values. Geopolymer sandwich panels approved its ability to sustain different type of loading in the same manner as that of conventional concrete. A prototype was constructed to assess the constructability and the construction cost of the proposed system. The lack of production lines of geopolymer ingredients increases the material cost. On the other hand, the calculated total cost for different construction systems revealed that the labor cost is lower for the cast in place structural insulated panels CIP-SIP system.