International Concrete Abstracts Portal

Editors: Mohammad Pour-Ghaz, Aali R. Alizadeh, and Jason Weiss

With the recent quest for developing sustainable infrastructure materials, there is a need for more advanced material characterization techniques at different length scales that can provide insight to the nature and fundamental behavior of the new classes of cementitious materials as they are becoming available. These methods can be used to predict the mechanical properties, microstructural aspects, and long-term performance of different cementitious systems. Examples of these novel techniques that have been recently used for material characterization include nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, nano- and micro-indentation, X-Ray tomography, and atomic force microscopy. Recently, major progress has also been made in the development of novel cement-based systems such as C-S-H/polymer nanocomposites and self-healing materials. This Special Publication aims at providing a treatise on the current research in the areas related to innovative characterization methods and analytical techniques used in the cement and concrete research, as well as the development of novel basic and composite cementitious materials. This Special Publication is developed to honor the significant contributions made by Dr. James J. Beaudoin over the past four decades to the advancement of cement and concrete science. Dr. Beaudoin, a Researcher Emeritus, Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and Fellow of the American Ceramic Society, has authored more than 500 publications, including five books, 20 book chapters, encyclopedia contributions, more than 270 research journal papers, 17 patents, and numerous discussions and book reviews. He is the recipient of numerous prestigious awards, including the Della Roy Lecture Award on applications of nanotechnology in cement science (American Ceramic Society, 2005), the Wason Medal for Materials Research (American Concrete Institute, March 1999) and the Copeland Award (American Ceramic Society, 1998). The papers included in this Special Publication were presented in two sessions in ACI Fall 2014 Convention, Oct 26-30, 2014.

Concerns about the future availability of traditional supplementary cementitious material (SCM) sources, like fly ash, have prompted the search for a wider variety of materials that could be used as SCMs in concrete. An important criterion for an SCM is pozzolanic reactivity, which is its ability to react with calcium hydroxide in the presence of water to form calcium silicate hydrate (C-S-H). ASTM criteria for SCMs address pozzolanic reactivity indirectly by measuring the compressive strength of SCM containing mortars, or more specifically the strength activity index (SAI). More direct methods of assessing pozzolanic reactivity include measuring the reduction of calcium hydroxide (CH) in cementitious pastes through methods like thermal gravimetric analysis (TGA). However, both direct and indirect tests to evaluate pozzolanic reactivity take a considerable amount of time due to the slow nature of certain pozzolanic reactions. Alternatively, the Chapelle test, which measures the amount of CH fixed by the SCM in solution at high temperatures, can serve as an accelerated test method for screening out potential SCMs. In this paper, the accuracy of the Chapelle test for measuring pozzolanic reactivity is evaluated for a variety of SCMs with different physical and chemical characteristics by comparing it with more traditional test methods like SAI and CH measurement through TGA.

The evaluation of steel corrosion in reinforced concrete is commonly carried out using techniques like half-cell potential (HCP) and linear polarization resistance (LPR) measurements. The latter is however the subject of interrogations concerning the relevance of the method and the actual steel area polarized by the external current I_ce applied from a surface counter-electrode. To control the path of the polarizing current I_ce towards a specific steel area, a current-confining device (guard-ring) is used in some LPR instruments, which imposes an additional current I_gr around the counter-electrode. The impact of this guard-ring on LPR measurements is deduced from the uniform corrosion assumption. However, previous works have shown that the polarizing current spreading in macrocell corrosion systems is more complex and does not verify the uniform corrosion hypothesis. This paper presents the results of a 2D numerical study providing new insights on the theoretical impact of a guard-ring in case of galvanostatic pulse measurements performed on a macrocell corrosion system. The polarizing and confining currents are spread in a similar way over the macrocell system. In the case of an anodic polarization, both I_ce and I_gr are collected by the active steel area. In the cathodic direction, both I_ce and I_gr are spread over the passive areas. Consequently, numerical results show that the assumed confining effect cannot be achieved in presence of corrosion macrocells and it is actually impossible to define a specific polarized area. Moreover, since polarizing and confining currents have similar distributions, the confining current fully contributes to the system polarization, while it is not considered in LPR measurement analyses.

Mortar bars made with silica glass aggregate were tested at 23°C (73°F) to evaluate the applicability of a previously proposed chemical model for the alkali silica reaction (ASR). The model, based on tests at 80°C (176°F), proposes that ASR gel does not form until portlandite (CH) in the hydrated paste is locally depleted and the calcium silicate hydrate (C-S-H) has been locally converted to a more highly polymerized and lower Ca/Si form. SEM-EDX, XRD, and ²⁹Si NMR spectroscopy of the 23°C (73°F) mortars show that the same chemical processes operate at both temperatures. At 23°C (73°F) and up to 60 days, only a small amount (~1%) of ASR gel forms and is confined to cracks entirely within the aggregate grains, but this small amount of gel containing Na, K, and Ca is sufficient to cause substantial expansion. There is no large-scale depletion of CH or increase in the C-S-H polymerization in the paste due to the small amount of gel formed and its confinement in the aggregate grains. Local reduction in both the amount of CH and the Ca/Si ratio of C-S-H in the paste is observed near places where gel-filled cracks in the aggregate contact paste, consistent with the proposed chemical model.

The viscoelastic nature of concrete is a topic of much study and the calcium-silicate-hydrate (C-S-H) phase is believed to be largely responsible for this viscoelastic behavior. In this study the viscoelastic properties of synthesized calcium-silicate-hydrate (C-S-H) and calcium-alumino-silicate-hydrate (C-A-S-H) are measured by quasi-static and dynamic nanoindentation. A protocol for synthesizing and preparing samples for chemical and mechanical characterization is presented. The addition of aluminum to C-S-H has been previously shown to modify its molecular structure, a modification that is expected to change the viscoelastic behavior. The results indicate that C-A-S-H behaves more viscously than C-S-H and a number of factors are discussed.