Filtern
Erscheinungsjahr
Dokumenttyp
- Beitrag zu einem Tagungsband (22)
- Zeitschriftenartikel (17)
- Vortrag (8)
- Buchkapitel (1)
- Forschungsbericht (1)
Sprache
- Englisch (45)
- Mehrsprachig (4)
Schlagworte
- Cement (49) (entfernen)
Organisationseinheit der BAM
Eingeladener Vortrag
- nein (8)
Polysaccharides are important rheology modifying admixtures in the building material sector.
The use of starch is becoming increasingly important, due to many ecological and economic advantages. In the construction sector, starch ethers are being used as thickeners and as means to increase the yield stress. The starch ethers that are available on the market differ in
their behaviour, which can vary greatly depending upon the binder system and mortar composition, e.g. solid volume content, binder type, additional admixtures. In view of the limited knowledge about the influence of molecular modifications associated with cement based systems, some fundamental rheological functional mechanisms were analysed in this study. The differently modified starch ethers used were derived from potatoes. They varied in their charges and degrees of hydroxypropylation. The setting and the flow behaviour of all examined variations
of starch ethers were analysed in cement pastes. In order to illustrate the effects of the starch ethers that were used, the water-cement ratio (w/c) was held constant in all the mixtures [Schmidt 2012]. The results indicated significant differences in setting and flow behaviour.
The presence of polycarboxylate ether (PCE) based superplasticizers (SPs) has an enormous influence on the early hydration of cement. The hydration is retarded and the timing of formation and the morphology of hydrates is affected. This short paper presents experimental results about the influence of delayed addition time of PCE SPs on hydration of cement and alite pastes, investigated by isothermal heat flow calorimetry. For cement as well as for alite pastes the hydration is retarded with SP, whereby the high charge PCE has a stronger retarding effect than the low charge PCE. The retardation caused by PCE is much more pronounced for alite than for cement mixes. If PCE is added later to the mix, the induction period is shortened and the hydration is accelerated compared to simultaneous addition. This applies for cement and alite pastes. With delayed PCE addition the alite shows a clearly less retarded setting and main hydration than after simultaneous addition. It is obvious that for alite pastes there is less retardation the later the addition of SP.
Superplasticizers (SPs) have been employed in concrete technology for decades to improve the workability of concrete in its fresh state. The addition of SPs in cement-based systems affects the early properties. Although the interaction of the cement particles with various SPs has been extensively researched, there still exists limited research on the interaction of SPs with supplementary cementitious materials such as rice husk ash (RHA). This paper investigates the rheological properties and early hydration kinetics of RHA-blended systems with three types of SPs, a polycarboxylate ether (PCE) and two lignosulphonates (LS-acc and LS-ret). In rheological properties, the addition of SP causes an initial improvement of workability as the yield stress is significantly reduced. The pastes with PCE and LS-acc show a slight increase of yield stress over time whereas pastes with LS-ret tend to lower the yield stress slightly over time, further improving the workability. Without SP, pastes with RHA show a lower yield stress but an increase in plastic viscosity as cement is further replaced with RHA. The addition of the LS SPs is observed to lower the plastic viscosity but remains constant with further replacement of cement with RHA. This indicates that LS SPs further adsorbs on RHA particles and hydration products produced causing dispersion of the particles
within the system. In early hydration kinetics, pastes with PCE retard hydration and the degree of retardation is further increased with LS SPs. In the presence of RHA, the retardation of LS SP systems is significantly reduced. The pastes with PCE show more ettringite in the SEM micrographs, but is observed to be shorter needles. This indicates an initial good workability for PCE. However, C-S-H and CH were observed to be low in quantity, whereby the pastes with LS show more nucleation sites for C-S-H and CH. The ettringite needles in the LS systems were similar in quantity and more elongated in some cases but not abundant as in the PCE systems.
Chemical admixtures allow to the create a variety of fresh and hardened state properties in cementitious materials. In the case of self-compacting concrete, plasticizers or superplasticizers are introduced with the aim to decrease the yield stress and the viscosity of the materials. However, in order to prevent segregation and bleeding, and to improve the water retention of cement-based system, stabilizing agents or viscosity agents are often introduced in addition. Among these admixtures, polysaccharides are most commonly used.
The aim of this study is to provide an understanding of competitive or synergetic effects induced by the combination of hydroxypropyl guar stabilizing agents (HPG) and superplasticizers on cement pastes. Two polycarboxylate superplasticizers (PCE) exhibiting different charge densities and one HPG were studied. It was found that the combination of HPG with PCE superplasticizer strongly affects the rheological behavior of cement pastes. Despite the presence of HPG, the viscosity of the pastes strongly decreased with increasing dosage of PCE until it became close to the viscosity of a cement paste with PCE only. However, the use of HPG in combination with PCE allows maintaining a significant yield stress in the cement paste compared to PCE alone. The increase in the charge density of the PCE seemed to amplify the drop of the viscosity and to reduce the gain on the yield stress induced by HPG.
The results also highlight a delay in the setting-time of the cement paste by adding HPG and PCE. The delay induced by HPG is significantly lower than that generated by PCEs. However, the combination of the both kind of admixtures leads to a slightly shorter setting-time compared to the PCE alone.
Today, concrete engineers can vary consistencies between very stiff and self-compacting. At the same time engineers can opt for a vast variety of binders. The possibility to use optimised mineral binders and to tailor rheological properties of concrete eventually opened up the path to multiple new technologies, where design criteria are no longer limited to the Young’s modulus and the compressive strength, but often comprise additional added value. It can therefore be concluded that the capability to control the rheology and the interactions particles can be considered as the catalyst for concrete innovations such as polymer modified cementitious composites (PCC) self-compacting concrete (SCC), high-performance concrete (HPC), ultra-high performance concrete (UHPC) or strain hardening cement based composites (SHCC). In the same way rheology modifying additions, SCMs and admixtures will become key parameters in mastering the challenges of the next decades such as:
- Additive manufacturing/3D-printing
- Overcoming pumping height limitations
- Casting at extreme temperatures
- Tailored rheology at delivery
In many regions in the Southern hemisphere the effective use of SCMs, additions and chemical admixtures for concrete could significantly contribute to solve problems induced by the challenging climatic conditions, but particularly in many countries with challenging climatic conditions, it is difficult to use them, due to lacking local supply and supply infrastructure, and often the awareness of the value of local mineral resources is missing. However, the long distance transportation of mineral resources and chemicals is not very environmentally friendly and the economic consequences are dramatic.
However, bio-based constituents and chemicals have been used in construction for ages effectively. Due to the enormous relevance of binders, fillers and rheology modifying admixtures it is worthwhile to recollect that nature provides an enormous variety of products that can be used readily or with low processing. Today, the use of petrol based polycarboxylate ether superplasticizers has become quite common in concrete technology due to their versatility, but their uncomplicated and cost efficient availability is limited in many countries in the world. However, alternatives are available, which can be found locally. In addition many agricultural wastes today are dumped, although they could be converted to reactive ashes easily.
Plant extracts have been used to modify the properties of concrete for long time. These plants are typically regionally abundantly available, cheap, and they are environmental friendly. They do not require special caring for seedlings, weeding or manuring to grow since they grow wildly.
The talk will present an overview of various options for binders, fillers and rheology modifying admixtures, that can be found in nature, and that may become a real alternative, once their interaction within the complex cementitious system is well understood.
Chemical admixtures like superplasticisers or stabilising agents are of ever increasing importance for modern concrete technology. They liberate the workability of concrete from its dependency on water content, and thus, open the gate towards innovative and future oriented concrete technologies. Meanwhile admixtures have become common practice in concrete technology, but the understanding of these highly complex polymers in the entire concrete system lags far behind their application. Due to its complex time-dependent, multi-phase and multi-scale behaviour, flowable concrete systems are highly complicated and cannot be described comprehensively by simple models. It is therefore extremely challenging to identify the relevant parameters that predominantly control flow phenomena on different size scales, since these may occur on any scale between the nano scale (e.g. superplasticizer adsorption) and macro scale (e.g. grading of the aggregates). The present study discusses fundamental mechanisms at the interface between particle or hydrate surfaces and the fluid phase at a very early stage of concrete formation, and links these effects to macroscopic flow phenomena.
Based on the observations of the nano scale effects, it seems that higher sensitivity against variations in the constituents, the handling, or the boundary condition are the inevitable price for higher performances. However, eventually a very effective method is introduced that helps to maintain stable processes regardless of the root cause for performance changes based on an efficient in-situ process control scheme and superplasticizer and stabilising agents as counter actions.
The paper showed that the STA behave completely different in pastes with LSF and cement, respectively, as well as with or without PCE. While STA can affect plastic viscosity and yield stress in LSF and cement pastes, the addition of PCE causes that the STA have mainly an impact on plastic viscosity, except DGUM and ST-low. The performance of STA in LSF and cementitious systems can vary greatly due to different ionic strengths of the liquid phase. The charges due to modification of the starches have an intense influence on the rheological properties in pastes. The combined use of PCE and STA can lead to a significant increase of the plastic viscosity without a strong effect to the yield stress.
For the evaluation of the effectivity of STA the ionic strength of the liquid phase and the solid volume fraction of the binder have to be taken into account. Further influences can arise from grain size and aggregate content as well as the temperature, which were not discussed in this paper.
Why Africa can spearhead innovative and sustainable cement and concrete technologies globally
(2016)
The perception of concrete in the society as well as in the politics is rather negative. This becomes obvious in the fact that the phrase “concrete jungle” has become synonym for hapless living with no perspectives. In politics and research funding, it is also not easy to create a broader audience, since concrete is falsely considered as old-fashioned material that is sufficiently understood today and does not need further considerations, particularly compared to allegedly newer materials. However, particularly since the last two decades the technology has completely changed. Binders of today are no more the same binders as used before, and concrete mixture compositions of today diverge quite significantly from compositions in the past. There is little understanding world-wide about that. This causes that potentials the concrete technology bears are wasted.
In the broadly found opinion that concrete is old-fashioned and ugly, it is ignored that architectural sins are not inherent to the material, which actually is extremely versatile and CO2-friendly compared to all other construction materials available. It is also ignored that 98% of the outer Earth’s crust are made of the elements cement and concrete are made from, and therefore it will be an illusion to believe that the complementary 2% can create materials to develop regions and infrastructures in less developed areas in the world.
For betterment in Africa the infrastructural development should have highest priority, since poor connections between settlements are responsible for enormous Price increases [2], and urban traffic congestion is responsible for an incredible loss of productivity. It is not unrealistic to assume that earners that are dependent on a car get stuck in traffic about 3-4 hours per day in cities like Lagos, Nairobi or Dar es Salaam. However, the traffic congestions do not only affect the car owners negatively but the living of the entire urban population every day.
Besides infrastructure, housing should be the other priority, since a large part of the African population does not live in adequate condition. This is a societal problem, since unequal Distribution of wealth is a major driving force for instability in societies. The latter has a global impact, since 8 many phenomena that can be observed all over the world such as political radicalism, xenophobia, terrorism, and migration can often be linked to instable societies.
However, the importance of infrastructure has an even wider range. Most African countries go through a change process recently. In order to strengthen very positive perspectives, the focus in politics and research funding is put on issues such as agriculture, energy, and health, which are without doubt extremely important issues. However, it is typically overlooked that all enhancements in these areas can only become effective, when an infrastructure is created to support the implementation of better concepts. Mobility is the key to a prosperous future, and mobility can only be granted by infrastructural construction activities. Hence, compared to many other regions in the world, cement and concrete technologies have a significantly higher relevance in Africa.
Urbanisation, habitat, environment, infrastructure and sustainability are major global challenges of the 21st century. By planning, exploiting of resources, building, and maintaining, civil engineers and relevant adjacent disciplines have been carrying a large responsibility for the existing environmental problems. Civil engineers are responsible for 70% of all material uses in the world, and civil construction has been dominating the growth of the developing world for the next decades, with enormous impact on the global climate as well as the distribution of wealth and quality of living in the world.
Today a variety of sustainable construction concepts have been developed and discussed. Recently a UNEP report was published, which provides a comprehensive overview of the challenges and potentials in the future from a scientific and industrial point of view. Sustainable solutions based on abundantly available resources (pozzolana and clay) or on renewable instead of limited industrial by-products (e.g. agricultural waste ashes) and new construction echnologies do exist. By applying, promoting and developing the implementation of the existing knowledge into real life constructions, civil engineers also hold the key for the mitigation of the global challenges. Using best practice sustainable construction solutions is particularly of highest importance in the developing world, since the implementation at an early stage creates the highest leverage for positive effects.
Potentials for sustainable cement and concrete technologies - Comparison between Africa and Europe
(2017)
The fundamental knowledge about cement and concrete has made enormous progress over the last decades, and today it would be possible to find optimised sustainable concrete solutions tailored for every given boundary framework and raw material supply. However, this knowledge barely finds implementation into practice despite the urgent global need to minimise carbon emissions and energy consumption. A major reason is that most concrete developments were historically made in the northern hemisphere, where today over-regulations and stagnating market perspectives slow down innovation drive towards higher sustainability. In most African countries, however, sustainable building is simply an urgent real-life problem. The demand for building is enormous, Standard solutions are not an option, and the pool of innovative local raw materials and concrete concepts is enormous. The paper provides a comprehensive comparison between the boundary frameworks of Europe and Africa, and it is explained why local African solutions shall be given priority over imported solutions. Examples of local African concrete solutions are given, and ideas for a rapid implementation are developed. Most of the potentially useful materials such as agricultural ashes, natural and calcined pozzolans, polysaccharides, etc. have not yet been subject to intensive research to date. Therefore, it is not unlikely to assume that with an open mind for non-Standard solutions, combined with creativity and particularly knowledge and awareness, the next generation of innovative and sustainable concretes will be developed and applied on the African continent. Therefore, the conclusion is that particularly the African continent provides the best starting position to develop better and more sustainable concrete solutions than anywhere else in the world. Hence, Africa can become a global pioneer in green cement and concrete technology with impact to the entire world.