Babatunde Abiodun Salami

King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals | KFUPM · Concrete Research Group

This paper investigates and presents a study on the comparative effects of added water and naphthalene-based superplasticizer (SP) on the compressive strength and microstructure of the developedpalm oil fuel ash engineered geopolymer composites (POFA-EGC). Three differently prepared50 mm50 mm50 mm specimens (with 10% water, with 10% SP and with 5%...

The chemical constituents of precursor materials, the composition and concentration of alkaline activators, volume of free water, and curing conditions are some of the mix design variables that influence the fresh and hardened properties of alkali-activated binders (AABs). To achieve desirable engineering properties and long-term performance of an...

The construction industry is one of the most dangerous industries worldwide due to deadly fatalities and accidents recorded yearly. Though many countries have established and implemented safety programs, the situation does not seem to have been mitigated. This study aims at developing a risk assessment approach that can be used to enhance the safet...

Palm oil fuel ash (POFA) is a noxious agricultural waste with considerable disposal challenges. Being a pozzolanic material, the bulk of generated POFA materials is used in the construction industry. Recently, its utilization in wastewater treatment is receiving increased attention. POFA is a silica-rich material with poor surface property. Its val...

Stabilized aggregate bases are vital for the long-term service life of pavements. Their stiffness is comparatively higher; therefore, the inclusion of stabilized materials in the construction of bases prevents the cracking of the asphalt layer. The effect of wet–dry cycles (WDCs) on the resilient modulus (Mr) of subgrade materials stabilized with C...

Coal mining waste in the form of coal gangue (CG) was established recently as a potential fill material in earthworks. To ascertain this potential, this study forecasts the strength and California Bearing Ratio (CBR) characteristics of chemically stabilized CG by deploying two widely used artificial intelligence approaches, i.e., artificial neural...

An accurate calculation of the flexural capacity of flexural members is vital for the safe and economical design of FRP reinforced structures. The existing empirical models are not accurately calculating the flexural capacity of beams and columns. This study investigated the estimation of the flexural capacity of beams using non-linear capabilities...

Water and wastewater treatment applications stand to benefit immensely from the design and development of new materials based on silica nanoparticles and their derivatives. Nanosilica possesses unique properties, including low toxicity, chemical inertness, and excellent biocompatibility, and can be developed from a variety of sustainable precursor...

Rebars made of fiber-reinforced plastic (FRP) might be the future reinforcing material, replacing mild steel rebars, which are prone to corrosion. The bond characteristics of FRP rebars differ from those of mild steel rebars due to their different stress-strain behavior than mild steel. As a result, determining the bond strength (BS) qualities of F...

Cement production is one of the major sources of decomposition of carbonates leading to the emission of carbon dioxide. Researchers have proven that incorporating industrial wastes is of paramount significance for producing green concrete due to the benefits of reducing cement production. The compressive strength of concrete is an imperative parame...

The construction industry is one of the most hazardous industries globally. Falls at height due to scaffolding accidents has consistently ranked as one of the most prevalent accidents in the industry. Though safety programs to mitigate these hazards have been implemented in many countries, this is not the case in developing countries like Nigeria....

Lithium batteries are increasingly used to store energy, but are limited by high cost, safety concerns, leaking of electrolytes, and low capacity. Recently, cement-based batteries have emerged as a viable alternative to lithium batteries. Indeed, the porous structure of cement and cement microcracks provide routes for ionic solutions to pass throug...

Globally, there has been a lack of sustained efforts by different industries to decarbonize the environment. Research on building materials has focused on the synthesis of alternative cement-free binders utilizing industrial by-products and natural materials to reduce greenhouse gases generated from cement production. Alkali-activated binder (AAB)...

The development of self-compacting alkali-activated concrete (SCAAC) has become a hot topic in the scientific community; however, most of the existing literature focuses on the utilization of fly ash (FA), ground blast furnace slag (GBFS), silica fume (SF), and rice husk ash (RHA) as the binder. In this study, both the experimental and theoretical...

In recent years, bacteria-based self-healing concrete has been widely exploited to improve the compressive strength of concrete using different bacterial species. However, both the identification of the optimal involved reaction parameters and theoretical framework information are still limited. In the present study, both experimentally and numeric...

Concrete produced with ordinary Portland cement (OPC) along with insertion of supplementary materials increases the level of nonlinearity. Due to this increased non-linearity and difficulty in modeling numerically, the focus has increased on the exploration of computational intelligent models like artificial neural network (ANN) to estimate differe...

Although the synthesis and properties of natural pozzolan (NP)-based alkali-activated binder (AAB) have been investigated, to the best of our knowledge, no study has focused on and assessed the performance of such concrete when exposed to acid attack. In addition, there is a lack of information regarding the optimisation of reaction parameters. The...

This study explores the measures that construction businesses are putting in place to mitigate the risks of litigation associated with potential contract breaches due to COVID-19. Field study and survey research was used to accumulate data for the preliminary study phase, whose results were used in the construction of the research questionnaire to...

Ternary-blend concrete is a complex composite material, and the nonlinearity in its compressive strength behavior is unquestionable. Entirely many models have been developed to accurately predict the ternary-blend concrete compressive strength, such as ANN, SVM, random forest, decision tree, to mention but a few. This study underscores the better p...

We consider a swelling porous-elastic system with viscoelastic damping and delay feedbacks acting on the fluid equation. Using the multiplier method and under the well-known assumption on the weight of delay term, we unexpectedly establish a general decay result without imposing the usual condition of equal wave speeds of the system, unlike the cas...

The impact of microbial calcium carbonate on concrete strength has been extensively evaluated in the literature. However, there is no predicted equation for the compressive strength of concrete incorporating ureolytic bacteria. Therefore, in the present study, 69 experimental tests were taken into account to introduce a new predicted mathematical f...

Purpose: The outbreak of Covid-19 pandemic has tested the resilience of the construction industry, putting the safety of workers and overall businesses at risk. This study explores the different strategies adopted by construction companies to protect the health and wellbeing of employees, security of the construction sites and projects, and keep th...

Bio-inspired self-healing of concrete cracks has been widely exploited to improve concrete properties and thus increase concrete life span using different bacterial species in recent years. The most common bacterial species found in the present literature are B. sphaericus, Sporosarcina pasteurii, Spore-forming alkali-resistant bacteria, B. megater...

The paper reports the outcome of the research work on mechanical and microstructural changes to palm oil fuel ash engineered alkali-activated cementitious composite (POFA-EACC) mortar exposed to different levels elevated temperatures (300-900°C) for 2 h. POFA-EACC mortar utilised in the study was prepared from POFA activated with liquid sodium sili...

A concrete composition that includes (i) a treated palm oil fuel ash, wherein the treated palm oil fuel ash is the only binder present, (ii) a fine aggregate, (iii) a coarse aggregate, and (iv) an alkali activator containing an aqueous solution of sodium hydroxide and sodium silicate. A cured concrete made from the concrete composition is also disc...

Novel use of palm oil fuel ash (POFA), a waste from palm oil mills in the development of mortar for structural applications. Strength enhancer, Al(OH)3 was added to increase its strength.

A method of demulsifying an emulsion of oil and water whereby palm oil fuel ash, which is a low cost waster product obtained from oil palm processing, is added to the emulsion and the resulting mixture is agitated, thereby breaking the emulsion into an aqueous phase and an oil phase. Solid particles of palm oil fuel ash settle to the bottom of the...

Corrosion initiation time of embedded steel is an important service life parameter, which depends on concrete material make-up, exposure environment, and duration of exposure. Early and accurate determination of corrosion initiation time will aid in designing durable reinforced concrete, saves cost and time. This study leveraged on the power of ens...

The petroleum industry is greatly in need of smart and cheap demulsifiers to break heavy crude oil emulsions. This study investigates the performance of palm oil fuel ash (POFA) as a demulsifier of crude oil emulsions produced during hydrocarbon exploration. Highly stable water-in-oil (W/O) emulsions having water:oil ratio of 7:3 were prepared unde...

This research work was conducted to investigate the residual strength performance of POFA alkali-activated mortar when subjected to different levels of elevated temperature. 100% POFA, sand and (Na2SiO3(aq)/NaOH(aq)) ratios of 2.5, 2, 1 and 0.5 were used in the preparation of POFA alkali-activated mortar mixtures. 50 mm x 50 mm x 50 mm cube specime...

The durability performance of palm oil fuel ash engineered alkali-activated cementitious composite (POFA-EACC) mortar exposed to different acid solutions is assessed in this study. 50 mm cubic specimens used for the study were prepared from 100% POFA, alkali-activator (Na2SiO3(aq)/NaOH(aq)) ratios of 2.5, different molarities (10, 12 and 14 M) of N...

Palm oil fuel ash (Pofa) and polyvinyl alcohol fibres were used to make an alkali-activated cementitious composite mortar, which was then tested. Based on the test results, a support vector regression model was developed to estimate the effect of the alkaline activator/Pofa ratio on early compressive strength at different added water contents. The...

This study assessed the flow criteria, compressive strength, and durability (chloride permeability, corrosion and sulfate resistance) characteristics of self-compacting concrete (SCC) prepared utilizing crushed limestone powder (CLSP). The test samples were prepared by partially replacing CLSP with cement and aggregate such that CLSP/(CLSP + Cement...

SCC is a flowing or continually deforming concrete which consolidates under its own weight, completely filling the formwork, even in the presence of reinforcement without the need for vibrators to form a product free of honeycombs and bug holes. Since its development in 1988, SCC has been used in different countries for various types of concrete st...

This paper studied the effect of common salt on the compaction and California Bearing Ratio (CBR) properties of eggshell stabilized lateritic soils with a view of obtaining a good compliment for eggshell as a useful stabilizer for road works. Classification and consistency tests were performed on the soil samples which were also subjected to compac...