Engineering Properties of Cement Mortar Produced with Mine Tailing as Fine Aggregate

This research investigated the feasibility of utilization of mine tailing, a disposal from mining exploitation process, to produce the cement mortar samples. Based on Densified Mixture Design Algorithm (DMDA) method, the mix-proportions in which fly ash (FA) accounted for 5% by total weight of FA and mine tailing were carried out on varied water-to-binder (w/b) ratios of 0.3, 0.4, and 0.5. Compressive strength, ultrasonic pulse velocity (UPV) and thermal conductivity tests were examined the engineering performance of mortar specimens. All mine tailing mortar specimens performed exceptional engineering properties, which were greatly affected by w/b ratio. The greatest compressive strength obtained in this study were 70.4 MPa in the mortar with w/b of 0.3. Increasing the w/b ratio had a negative impact on strength, UPV and thermal conductivity of mortar specimens.