Experimental study on Fresh and Hardened Properties of Quaternary Blended Cementitious Concrete for Sustainability

Vardhaman College of Engineering, Civil Engineering Department, Hyderabad, India

^* Corresponding author: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Published online: 3 August 2026

Abstract

This experimental study focuses on Quaternary blended cementitious concrete (QBC) with different proportion of Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC), Fly Ash (FA), Metakaolin (MK) and Ground Granulated Blast-Furnace Slag (GGBFS). QBC performance attributes were assessed with workability, initial-final setting time, and their consistency based on standard tests that revealed improvements in handling fresh QBC. To prove the toughness of the concrete in the hardened stage, compressive strength, flexural strength and split tensile tests at 7, 14 and 28days were performed. The results showed that the Quaternary mixes improved both fresh and hardened properties from 1% to 3%. Important factors concluded by all these results indicate that the quaternary mixed cementitious concrete can also lead to high performance application and it can also give long-term benefit without damaging structural efficiency and can be considered as sustainable material. Another finding of the study is about mechanical performance of QBC which gives equal performance as conventional concrete by incorporating SCM under different percentages. In this experiment, it is clearly observed that the addition of MK and increase in GGBS % and incorporating FA really enhances the improvement of the concrete with respect to its fresh and hardened properties.