One of the most harmful phenomena in concrete is the alkali-silica reaction (ASR). It is a chemical reaction that takes place between the aggregates reactive silica and the alkalis within the cement paste. The alkali-silica gel is the result of this reaction and this gel has the ability to absorb water and increases in volume. This increase in volume causes a high pressure inside the cement paste and causing internal stress that can lead to a severe damage for concrete. The ASR depends on the presence of high basic media (PH > 12), high relative humidity, it increases with increasing temperature and it needs a long time to appear, up to many months [35,[60], [61] and [62]].
Different materials have been used to mitigate the ASR like metakaolin [63], fly ash [58,64] and silica fume [1]. It has been also proved that milled waste glass, with a particle sizes less than 75 μm, has the ability to suppress the ASR due to the pozzolanic properties of the milled waste glass [65]. The ability of the milled waste glass to suppress the harmful effect of the ASR encourages the researchers to try to use milled waste glass to hinder the ASR effect of the waste glass aggregate.
Shayan [41] and Shayan and Xu [66] studied the use of waste glass as a partial cement and aggregate replacement in the same mixture to produce concrete. Table 6 shows the particle size distribution of waste glass used. Coarse and fine waste glass was used as a partial replacement for aggregate with a particle size range (0.15–12 mm) while waste glass powder was used as a partial cement replacement with a particle sizes less than 10 μm. The experimental results showed that the compressive strength of the waste glass concrete improved in comparison to that without glass. The ASR tests showed that increasing the glass powder reduces the effect of the ASR due to the pozzolanic reaction. The results proved that 30% replacement of cement with glass powder with 50% replacement of natural aggregate with coarse and fine glass aggregate could be used safely without any effect on the properties of the produced concrete.