Hydrophobic engineered cementitious composites for highway applications

Anti-Icing Superhydrophobic Surfaces: Controlling Entropic Molecular Interactions to Design Novel Icephobic Concrete

“…The concentration of the PVA surfactant in water was kept constant at 5% for both types of emulsions. The procedure of emulsion preparation was described in detail in our previous study [72][73][74].…”

The performance of stress-sensing smart fiber reinforced composites in moist and sodium chloride environments

“…Standard silica sand (U.S. Silica Company) was used at a sand-to-cement ratio of 0.5 (Table 1). To improve the workability of the mixture while maintaining a low water to cement ratio, a high-range water-reducing admixture (polycarboxilate type, PCE from Handy Chemicals) was used at a dosage of 0.125% by weight of cement [19]. To improve the flexural response and ductility, PVA fibers (RECS 7 Â 6 mm from Kuraray) and carbon nanofibers (PR-24-XT-PS from Pyrograf Products) were added to the mix in the amount of 3% and 0.2% by volume, respectively.…”

“…Common two-and four-probe methods to detect cracking of cementitious materials under tension strain are Electrical Impedance Tomography (EIT) [11] and Electrical Resistance Tomography (ERT) [13]. The four-probe method requires four electrical contacts on a specimen and uses two contacts to apply the electrical current while the other contacts detect the voltage between the points of interest [19]. The two-probe method has only two contacts at the points of interest that pass the current through the matrix which are used to measure the resistance.…”

“…The selected fiber loading was based on a preliminary experiment optimizing the mixture proportioning of reference and CNF based compositions. The CNF dosage of 0.2% by volume was selected to provide a balance between the performance and processing technology [18,19]. The nano-fiber content must be kept below the percolation threshold to ensure optimal electrical properties and response, high compressive strength, workability, and to reduce material costs [13,[16][17][18].…”

The Effect of Nano-SiO2 on Cement Hydration

“…At a mesoscale (100 μm to 50 mm), researches deal with the optimization of aggregates to reduce the consumption of cementitious materials [ 1 -5 ], as well as to improve the performance of concrete mixtures [ 6 , 7 ]. Different compaction techniques [ 8 ] or addition of air entraining additive [ 9 ] have been used to enhance the durability against freeze-thaw damage. At a sub-micro-scale (100 nm to 1 μm) and micro-scale (1-100 μm), addition of supplementary cementitious materials was used to increase the mechanical performance and durability of portland cement based materials [ 10 , 11 ].…”