Influences of chloride immersion on zeta potential and chloride in concentration of cement-based materials

In this paper, the zeta potential of freshly mixed cement paste and hardened cement pastes, as well as the concentration index, was measured. The influences of chloride concentration in mixing water and slag content on zeta potential of freshly mixed pastes were studied. A proposed model was expressed to explain the relationship of zeta potential and concentration index of hardened cement pastes immersed in chloride solution. The results showed that the increase of chloride concentration in mixing water and slag replacement improved the zeta potential of freshly mixed cement, the hydration rate and concentration of ions in mixed water affects the zeta potential. With the increase of chloride concentration in soaking solution, the chloride concentration index and zeta potential of hardened cement paste all gradually decreased. The addition of slag gave some changes on chloride in concentration and zeta potential. The relationship among chloride concentration index, chloride concentration in soaking solution and slag replacement revealed by Gouy-Chapman model was in good agreement with the measured results

AC impedance spectroscopy characteristics of chloride-exposed cement pastes

In this paper, the characteristics of AC impedance spectroscopy of cement paste immersed in chloride solution were measured and analyzed with a proposed equivalent circuit model. The elements in the proposed equivalent circuit, including the resistance of interface between electrode and specimens, resistance of continuous and discontinuous pore, capacitance of solid phase and electrical double layer (EDL) were discussed. The results showed that the resistance of interface between electrode and testing specimen was much lower than that of cement paste. With the increase of chloride concentration in the soaking solution, the resistance of continuous gradually decreased due to the higher conductivity of chloride solution. Stripped out the impacts of concentration of pore solution on resistance of pores, the resistance of continuous pore increased firstly due to the decrease of continuous pore volume from the formation of Friedel's salt. However, the resistance of discontinuous pores gradually decreased with the increase of soaking solution concentration due to the transformation of continuous pores to discontinuous pores. The reaction between chloride ions and hydration products and formation of Friedel's salt decreased the porosity of cement pastes and led to higher capacitance of solid phase. Based on an idealized two-plate capacitor model for EDL, the thickness of EDL was calculated from the measured capacitance. The decrease of EDL thickness with chloride concentration in soaking solution was in agreement with the results of chloride contents in EDL obtained from pore solution expression test. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Effects of chloride concentration on microstructure of cement pastes by AC impedance spectroscopy HU

Alternating current (AC) impedance spectroscopy has been applied in characterizing microstructural evolution and electrochemical properties of cement-based systems. In the present paper, an equivalent circuit model was proposed to study the influences of chloride binding on microstructure and solid-liquid interfacial properties of cement paste. Chloride concentration index of pore solution was measured to correlate to the parameters in equivalent circuit model corresponding to electrical double layer at solid-liquid interface. The results showed that the parameters of equivalent circuit model can properly indicate the microstructure and interfacial properties of cement paste. Resistance of continuous pores was gradually decreased with chloride concentration in soaking solution due to the higher conductivity of pore solution. The capacitance of electrical double layer was increased with chloride concentration in pore solution due to more content of chloride ions in electrical double layer. While the thickness of electrical double layer was decreased as chloride concentration increased, which is in agreement with mathematical calculation

Investigation on influential factors on chloride concentration index of cement-based materials by pore solution expression method

In this study, the effects of different factors on chloride concentration index (N-c) of cement paste were studied. The factors including chloride concentration in soaking solution, slag replacement, external applied voltage and cation ions of soaking solution were all studied from the electrical double layer (EDL) properties point of view. Zeta potential and proton Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (H-1 NMR) measurements were conducted to investigate the properties of electrical double layer for cement paste specimens and their effects on the value of chloride concentration index. The results showed that these factors all impacted effects on chloride concentration in electrical double layer and chloride concentration index. The properties of electrical double layer including chloride distribution and thickness of electrical double layer mainly controlled the phenomenon of "chloride concentrate" and value of chloride concentration index. As the increase of zeta potential and electrical double layer thickness, the content of chloride ions in electrical double layer and the value of chloride concentration index gradually increased. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Performance Analysis of Optimal Single Stream Beamforming in MIMO Dual-Hop AF Systems

This paper investigates the performance of optimal single stream beamforming schemes in multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) dual-hop amplify-and-forward (AF) systems. Assuming channel state information is not available at the source and relay, the optimal transmit and receive beamforming vectors are computed at the destination, and the transmit beamforming vector is sent to the transmitter via a dedicated feedback link. Then, a set of new closed-form expressions for the statistical properties of the maximum eigenvalue of the resultant channel is derived, i.e., the cumulative density function (cdf), probability density function (pdf) and general moments, as well as the first order asymptotic expansion and asymptotic large dimension approximations. These analytical expressions are then applied to study three important performance metrics of the system, i.e., outage probability, average symbol error rate and ergodic capacity. In addition, more detailed treatments are provided for some important special cases, e.g., when the number of antennas at one of the nodes is one or large, simple and insightful expressions for the key parameters such as diversity order and array gain of the system are derived. With the analytical results, the joint impact of source, relay and destination antenna numbers on the system performance is addressed, and the performance of optimal beamforming schemes and orthogonal space-time block-coding (OSTBC) schemes are compared. Results reveal that the number of antennas at the relay has a great impact on how the numbers of antennas at the source and destination contribute to the system performance, and optimal beamforming not only achieves the same maximum diversity order as OSTBC, but also provides significant power gains over OSTBC.Comment: to appear in IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications special issue on Theories and Methods for Advanced Wireless Relay

Ergodic Capacity Analysis of Amplify-and-Forward MIMO Dual-Hop Systems

This paper presents an analytical characterization of the ergodic capacity of amplify-and-forward (AF) MIMO dual-hop relay channels, assuming that the channel state information is available at the destination terminal only. In contrast to prior results, our expressions apply for arbitrary numbers of antennas and arbitrary relay configurations. We derive an expression for the exact ergodic capacity, simplified closed-form expressions for the high SNR regime, and tight closed-form upper and lower bounds. These results are made possible to employing recent tools from finite-dimensional random matrix theory to derive new closed-form expressions for various statistical properties of the equivalent AF MIMO dual-hop relay channel, such as the distribution of an unordered eigenvalue and certain random determinant properties. Based on the analytical capacity expressions, we investigate the impact of the system and channel characteristics, such as the antenna configuration and the relay power gain. We also demonstrate a number of interesting relationships between the dual-hop AF MIMO relay channel and conventional point-to-point MIMO channels in various asymptotic regimes.Comment: 40 pages, 9 figures, Submitted to to IEEE Transactions on Information Theor

Internal Curing by SAP in Ultra-High Strength Concrete with Cement-Silica Fume-Fly Ash Binder

Super-absorbed polymer (SAP) is an effective internal curing materials for reducing autogenous shrinkage and improving cracking resistance of ultra-high-strength concrete (UHSC). This study investigated the compressive strength, shrinkage properties of UHSC with cement–silica fume–fly ash binder. The composition of the binder was designed using seven-batch factorial design method. The relationships between the binder composition and the properties were expressed in contours. Results showed that, silica fume could improve the compressive strength and total shrinkage of UHSC. However fly ash reduced the compressive strength and total shrinkage of UHSC to certain extent. On the other hand, under the internal curing of SAP, the silica fume and fly ash demonstrated positive synergistic effects on the compressive strength. At the early age of hydration, the effectiveness of internal curing first increases and then decreases with the increase of fly ash and silica fume content. However, at the later age of hydration, the effectiveness of internal curing by SAP reduced because of the pozzolanic activity of silica fume and fly ash

Changes of pore structure and chloride content in cement pastes after pore solution expression

Pore solution expression is a widely accepted approach to extract pore solution of cement-based materials by appllying high pressure. In this study, the variations of pore solution distribution and chloride content in cement pastes before and after pore solution expression were examined. The results showed that the value of chloride concentration index N-c were mostly higher than 1.0 for cement pastes immersed in NaCl solution, and decreased with the chloride concentration of soaking solution and water-to-binder (w/b) ratio. During the pore solution expression, the pores larger than 40 nm were totally removed and the porosity of smaller pore was decreased. Based on a proposed physical model on structure of cement paste, the value of N-c was calculated according to the variations of pore structure and chloride content during pore solution expression. The calculated results showed similar trend as the experimental results obtained by pore solution expression method

A review on microstructure characterization of cement-based materials subjected to chloride by AC Impedance

AC impedance spectroscopy is a powerful technique, and has been widely applied to measure microstructure and electrochemical properties of cement-based materials. This paper reviews the equivalent circuit models proposed by researchers to study the chloride related issues, including microstructure based models and electrical circuit models corresponding to ion migration and steel corrosion. The determination of the chloride induced corrosion parameters such as chloride diffusion coefficient, chloride concentration threshold and corrosion rate, and the microstructural modification of cement-based materials due to the chloride penetration in chloride migration test are all introduced. The inhomogeneous structure of cement-based materials make it difficult to determine an appropriate equivalent circuit model. An systemic and instructive methodology for the determination of equivalent circuit for AC impedance spectroscopy analysis is needed

Structural build-up of cementitious paste with nano-Fe3O4 under time-varying magnetic fields

The structural build-up of cementitious paste with nano-Fe3O4 under time-varying magnetic fields was experimentally investigated using small amplitude oscillatory shear (SAOS) technique. Several modes of magnetic fields, such as constant, sudden-changed and linearly-changed, were applied to the cementitious paste. Results showed that the structural build-up of the cementitious paste depended on the magnetizing time and magnetic field strength. Applying constant magnetic fields improved the liquid-like behavior during first minutes and afterwards the solid-like property was enhanced. Both the sudden-increased and sudden-decreased magnetic fields resulted in a sharp decrease in storage modulus. The linearly increasing magnetic field resulted in a slight increase in storage modulus but higher liquid-like behavior. When the magnetic field was linearly decreased from 0.5 T to approx. 0.25 T, the structural build-up was enhanced significantly, and with the continuously decreasing magnetic field from approx. 0.25 T to 0 T, a decrease in storage modulus was observed