Nonlinearity and isotope effect in temporal evolution of mesoscopic structure during hydration of cement

Autor(en)

S. Mazumder, Debasis Sen, Jitendra Bahadur, Jürgen Klepp, Helmut Rauch, José Teixeira

Abstrakt

Though cement is a ubiquitous material with global production exceeding that of any other material of technological importance, the mechanism of its hydration and evolution of cement-water mixtures into gels of high compressive strength is poorly understood, despite extensive research over the past century. The present investigation, based on neutron-scattering measurements, aims at unraveling this enigma and outlines the evolution of the mesoscopic structure of the cement paste which exhibits temporal oscillations, strongly dependent on the scale of observation and on the medium of hydration (light or heavy water). While the formation of hydration products is synchronous for hydration with H2O, the process is nonsynchronous for hydration with D2O. The reason why morphological patterns of domains at different times look dissimilar, as seen before [S. Mazumder, D. Sen, A. K. Patra, S. A. Khadilkar, R. M. Cursetji, R. Loidl, M. Baron, and H. Rauch, Phys. Rev. Lett. 93, 255704 (2004); Phys. Rev. B 72, 224208 (2005)], for different hydration media emerges as a natural consequence of this finding. The present investigation also provides an explanation for disagreement with the hypothesis of dynamical scaling for hydration of cement with heavy water and is a step forward toward general understanding of hydration process.

Organisation(en)

Physik Funktioneller Materialien

Externe Organisation(en)

Bhabha Atomic Research Center, Technische Universität Wien, French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA)

Journal

Physical Review B

Band

82

Anzahl der Seiten

10

ISSN

1098-0121

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.82.064203

Publikationsdatum

2010

Peer-reviewed

Ja

ÖFOS 2012

103018 Materialphysik

Link zum Portal

https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/de/publications/8a6fb315-6170-4ea9-aff6-e2ad24d3954e