Development and Performance of High Strength Lightweight Concrete with Perlites

The European Green Deal poses ambitious challenges for the construction industry in general. It is necessary to develop building materials that enable the design of more environmentally friendly and sustainable buildings and construction processes in general. Lightweight concretes offer the potential to tackle several requested improvements for the precast industry and conventional construction. The addition of low-density aggregates allows the design of concretes with good thermal insulation properties and low weight. However, conventional lightweight aggregates and recipes developments usually result in concretes with low compressive strengths. With the help of perlites produced in electric furnaces, it was possible to develop high-strength lightweight concretes with compressive strengths of normal concretes in the course of an accelerated recipe development process. The formulations led to a selection of lightweight concretes which, compared to high-performance aerogel lightweight concretes, achieved strength increases of up to 100% at a comparable dry density. Initial simplified fire tests also showed positive results in terms of fire behavior and thermal conductivity. The measurement results of a thermal imaging camera in the single flame test show benevolent behavior under direct flame exposure.