Virtual Cement. Chapter 10.3.
Virtual Cement. Chapter 10.3.
(596 K)
Bullard, J. W.; Ferraris, C. F.; Garboczi, E. J.
Innovations in Portland Cement Manufacturing. Chapter
10.3, Portland Cement Association, Skokie, IL, Bhatty,
J. I.; Miller, F. M.; Kosmatka, S. H., Editor(s),
1311-1331 p., 2004.
Keywords:
cements; concretes; hydration; elastic properties;
rheology; particle size distribution
Abstract:
Cementitious materials, including cement paste, mortar,
and concrete, possess great chemical and structural
complexity. Chemically, cement pastes contain many
chemical components and mineral phases.Many of these
phases can be amorphous or poorly crystalline, with
metastable solid solution compositions varying over a
fairly wide range. Dozens of chemical hydration
reactions may occur simultaneously at rates that vary
from region to region within the material. Structurally,
a cementitious material is a random composite structure
on length scales from nanometers to millimeters, and the
contrast in various physical properties among the
different composite phases is often quite large. One
would be hard pressed to find a system that even
approaches this range of complexity from among other
classes of engineering materials such as ceramics and
metals.
Building and Fire Research Laboratory
National Institute of Standards and Technology
Gaithersburg, MD 20899