Effect of mixing uniformity of sand–cement mixture on dielectric properties

Abstract

The dielectric properties of cement-based material are closely related to the mixture proportion, and thus can be used for evaluation of its quality and integrity. For the same mixture proportions, however, the mixed states are always different. It is thus important to determine whether the mixing uniformity of a sand–cement mixture has an effect on the dielectric properties. In this study, the dielectric properties of a sand–cement mixture were measured using the neural network inversion method. The results indicate that the mixing uniformity of a sand–cement mixture has no obvious effect on its dielectric properties and the measured results were approximately in agreement with values calculated using the Maxwell–Garnett formula. Therefore, when measuring the dielectric properties of a sand–cement mixture, the volume ratio is important but mixing uniformity is not.