Flexural behavior of RC beam using industrial copper slag as a sustainable substitute for fine aggregate

The continuous growth of industrialization causes major challenges in the disposal of extensive amounts of industrial by-products. The utilization of industrial by-products in concrete is a sustainable substitute for natural river sand and reduces the scarcity of global resources. In this intent, current research aims to utilize copper slag as an alternative to natural fine aggregate in the reinforced concrete beam. The incorporation of copper slag as a partial substitute for fine aggregate influences the mechanical characteristics of concrete. The reinforced concrete beam with the optimum percentage of copper slag is prepared and tested to evaluate the flexural parameters. The results exhibit that the addition of copper slag results in a denser concrete structure due to its fine particles and pozzolanic reactivity. Incorporating 40% copper slag results in a 21.4% increase in ultimate load-carrying capacity and a 20.23% increase in stiffness of the RC beam. Furthermore, finite element analysis is conducted for the reinforced concrete beam to validate the experimental results. ANSYS model simulates the failure mode and responses of reinforced concrete beams with high accuracy. The numerical results show that the replacement of copper slag has a significant effect on the flexural characteristics of reinforced concrete beams. The outcomes of this numerical investigation show that the load–deflection relationship, crack pattern, and failure modes are in close agreement with their experimental observation. The numerical analysis results show a maximum deviation percentage of 7.218 in comparison to the results obtained from the experimental investigation.