## 2 Experimental Program
### Material Specifications  
The three waste materials used as the source materials in QFS-GPC are QRD, FA, and SG. The QRD wastes were obtained from the quarries at Margallah Hills located near Taxila (Pakistan). The QRD is collected at the bottom of the aggregate crushers during the formation of the coarse aggregates. It was ground to achieve the required size equivalent to the OPC particles, which can be sieved through a 45-um sieve [28]. The grinding process of the QRD is shown in Figure 1. The quarry waste was obtained from the Margalla stone hill crushers and was subjected to ball mill grinding machine for 2 days in laboratory. Furthermore, the resulting 90% material passing 45 um was used. The FA and SG used in the present study are shown in Figure 2. The processed SG used in this study has pozzolanic and cementitious properties confirming ASTM C989/C989M-18a [34]. The color of SG looks off-white due to the occurrence of hydraulic reaction of water during mixing, and its particle size was 45 um. The low-calcium FA (Class F), taken from Port Qasim coal-fired power plant in Karachi (Pakistan), was used as a source of aluminosilicate constituents for preparing of GPC mixes with QRD and SG. The appearance of FA was grey and fulfills the requirement of the ASTM C618-19 [35]. The X-ray fluorescence (XRF) spectroscopy was used to assess the chemical composition of FA, SG, and QRD as summarized in Table 1. The silica and alumina compositions are 58.32% and 29.5% in FA, 34.38% and 12.98% in SG, and 9.35% and 1.64% in QRD, respectively, in the binder materials (Table 1). The QRD has the highest content of calcium oxides (CaO), i.e., 47.13% as compared to SG (37.33%) and FA (1.57%). The level of calcium, aluminum, and silica oxides played an important role in the geopolymer matrix by forming calcium silicate hydrate (CSH), calcium aluminum silicate hydrate (CASH), and sodium aluminosilicate hydrate (NASH) in the polymerization procedure [32; 33]. For comparing the mechanical properties of QFS-GPC with the conventional/OPC concrete, OPC-conforming ASTM type II [25] has been used for control specimens to compare with the GPC specimens. The physical properties and chemical composition of the OPC used are presented in Table 2.  
The natural river sand from Lawrencepur (near Attack, Pakistan) was used as fine aggregates in the present study. The coarse aggregates (CA) were taken from Margallah quarries (near Taxila, Pakistan). The maximum and minimum size of CA are kept as 20 mm and 10 mm, respectively, according to the specifications of ASTM C136/C136M-19 [37]. The physical properties of sand and CA are shown in Table 3.  
The GPC mix is generally more viscous and has gluey characteristics than the conventional OPC mix due to the high viscosity of SH and SS solutions [4]. The chemical composition of the SS solution is shown in Table 4. To increase the workability of the fresh ternary blended GPC mixes, a water-reducing admixture commercially identified as Sikament-520 was used as a superplasticizer (SP). The amount of SP was varying in the mixes to achieve a medium range of slump (50 to 89 mm) [38] as summarized in Table 5. \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c} \hline \hline
**Material** & **QRD (\%)** & **SG (\%)** & **FA (\%)** \\ \hline SiO\({}_{2}\) & 9.35 & 34.38 & 58.32 \\ Al\({}_{2}\)O\({}_{3}\) & 1.64 & 12.98 & 29.5 \\ Fe\({}_{2}\)O\({}_{3}\) & 1.03 & 1.29 & 1.13 \\ CaO & 47.13 & 37.33 & 1.57 \\ MgO & 1.25 & 5.59 & 0.50 \\ K\({}_{2}\)O & 0.20 & 0.82 & - \\ Na\({}_{2}\)O & - & 0.29 & 0.35 \\ SO\({}_{3}\) & 0.08 & 0.23 & 4 \\ SiO\({}_{2}\)/Al\({}_{2}\)O\({}_{3}\) & 5.70 & 2.64 & 2.03 \\ LOI (loss on ignition) & 38.65 & 4.31 & 5.17 \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 1: The chemical composition of QRD, SG, and FA from XRF analysis.