The Effect of Pozzolanic Material and Waste Foundry Sand on Fresh Mortar Properties and Prediction of Some Results by Artificial Neural Networks

Waste reuse is frequently included in scientific studies. As a result of the increase in production after the Industrial Revolution, this waste is increasing day by day. One of these wastes is waste casting sand used as molding sand in the casting industry. In this study, the effects of this waste and silica fume and fly ash, which are also waste materials, on fresh mortar properties were investigated. Different proportions of fly ash, foundry sand, and silica fume mixtures were used in the study. Spreading tests were carried out on the mixtures with mini v funnel and mini-slump funnel according to EFNARC. According to the experiments, we tried to determine the most suitable mortar mixtures in terms of workability with appropriate material selection. The effect of waste materials on workability has shown a positive development. It tried to determine the test results of some mixtures by modeling with artificial neural networks. The effect of water content in some mixtures was also analyzed, and it was concluded that a 0.3 w/b ratio was the most suitable. The cement dosage was kept constant at 800 kg/m3, and other variables were analyzed. The substitutions of pozzolanic materials were proportioned over the cement dosage.