For ages, concrete has been used to construct underwater structures. Concrete laying underwater is a very complex procedure important to the success or failure of underwater projects. This paper elucidates the influence of alkali activator ratios on geopolymers for underwater concreting; focusing on the geopolymer concrete synthesized from fly ash and kaolin activated using sodium hydroxide and sodium silicate solutions. The geopolymer mixtures were designed to incorporate multiple alkali activator ratios to evaluate their effects on the resulting geopolymers’ properties. The fresh concrete was molded into 50 mm cubes in seawater using the tremie method and tested for its engineering properties at 7 and 28 days (curing). The control geopolymer and underwater geopolymers’ mechanical properties, such as compressive strength, water absorption density, and setting time were also determined. The differences between the control geopolymer and underwater geopolymer were determined using phase analysis and functional group analysis. The results show that the geopolymer samples were optimally strengthened at a 2.5 alkali activator ratio, and the mechanical properties of the control geopolymer exceeded that of the underwater geopolymer. However, the underwater geopolymer was determined to be suitable for use as underwater concreting material as it retains 70% strength of the control geopolymer.

Geopolymer is widely studied nowadays in various scope of studies. Some of the ongoing studies are the study of the various materials towards the geopolymer strength produced. Meanwhile, some of the studies focus on the mixing of the geopolymer itself. This paper discussed the phase analysis of metakaolin/dolomite geopolymer for different solid to the liquid ratio which was, 0.4, 0.6, 0.8, and 1.0, and the properties that affected the geopolymer based on the phases. The constant parameters in this study were the percentage of metakaolin and dolomite used. The metakaolin used was 80% meanwhile dolomite usage was 20%. Besides that, the molarity of NaOH used is 10M and the alkaline activator ratio used is 2.0. All the samples were tested at 28 days of curing. The results show that the 0.8 solid to the liquid ratio used gave better properties compare to other solid to liquid ratio. The phases analyzed were quartz, sillimanite, mullite, and faujasite. The 0.8 S/L ratio shows the better properties compared to others by the test of phase analysis, compressive strength morphology analysis, and functional group analysis.

Low calcium fly ash is used as the main material in the mixture and the crumb rubber was used in replacing fine aggregates in geopolymer mortar. Sodium hydroxide (NaOH) and sodium silicate (Na2SiO3) which were high alkaline solution were incorporated as the alkaline solution. The fly ash reacted with the alkaline solution forming alumino-silicate gel that binds the aggregate to produce a geopolymer mortar. The loading of crumb rubber in the fly ash based geopolymer mortar was set at 0% (CRGM-0), 5% (CRGM-5), 10% (CRGM-10), 15% (CRGM-15), and 20% (CRGM-20), respectively. NaOH solution (12M) and Na2SiO3 solution ratio is set constant at 2.5 for all geopolymer mixture and the fly ash to alkali activator ratio was kept at 2.0. The CRGM at 28 days of curing time was exposed to elevated temperature at 200°C, 400°C, 600°C and 800°C. The weight loss of the CRGM increases with increasing temperature at all elevated temperatures. However, the density and compressive strength of CRGM decrease with an increase of crumb rubber loading for all elevated temperature exposure. The compressive strength of CRGM reduced due to the fact that rubber decomposes between 200°C and 600°C thereby creating voids. CRGM-15 and CRGM-20 showed cracks developed with rough surface at 800°C. Image obtained from scanning electron microscope (SEM) showed that, the CRGM changed significantly due to the decomposition of crumb rubber and evaporation of the free water at 400°C, 600°C and 800°C.