Determination of Modulus of Rupture of Pavement Concrete with Silica Fume and Fly Ash using Taguchi Technique

The purpose of this study is to optimize the 28 days modulus of rupture of concrete pavement (CP) by using the Taguchi Method. The experiments were designed using an orthogonal array technique in L16 array with four factors, namely, the water/cementitious ratio of 0.30, 0.35, 0.40 and 0.45, four different types of gradations with maximum aggregate size of 32 mm, 0, 5, 10, 15% Fly ash and 0, 10, 20 and 30% Silica fume by weight of cement. The signal to noise ratio (S/N) were calculated for evaluating the experimental results then the S/N values were analyzed using an analysis of variance (ANOVA) technique. According to the ANOVA results, water/cementitious ratio play significant role for modulus of rupture of CP. Moreover, the optimum conditions were found to be 0.30 water/cementitious ratio, type IV gradation containing 33% from 16–32 mm sieve, 20% from 8–16 mm, 17% from 4–8 mm and 30% from 0–4 mm aggregate, 10% FA content and 20% SF content for 28 days modulus of rupture. The modulus of rupture of 6.70MPa was obtained at the optimum conditions.