Morphology and Strength of Cement Paste from Clay as Nanomaterial

Abstract

Now days the application of nanomaterials was vastly growing in the development of new material to improve the quality of human life. Particles of nanomaterials which are in nanoscale helps to improve to the characteristics of the existing micro based materials. The application of nanomaterials in the construction were started since in the early 90s when during those time micro based materials was very demanding especially when dealing with High Performance Concrete (HPC). The utilization of nanobased materials improves and reinforces the cement matrix system and performs early strength and also enhances tensile properties of concrete. In this research, two types of clay were used which nanometakaolin and nanometaclay. nanometakaolin were made from sol gel process thats involved milling technique and nanometaclay were supplied by Sigma Aldrich. The mix proportion for clay based cement paste also includes metakaolin as cement replacement material. nanometakaolin and nanometaclay was added as additives from 0, 1, 3, 5, 7, 9 percent (%) from weight of cement and will be compared to OPC as control specimen. nanometakaolin and nanometaclay inclusion in cement paste will be evaluated for morphology effect by using Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM), chemical composition by using X-Ray Fluorescent (XRF) technique and strength properties. From morphology evaluation, the shape of the particles and particularisation of the matrix observed on the nanometakaolin, nanometaclay and plain cement paste were compared. Similarly, the strength of the plain cement paste shows was compared with those of nanometakaolin and nanometaclay. From the results, shows that inclusion of nanometakaolin at 7% additives generates early strength of cement paste and at 28 days of age addition of 1% of nanometakaolin was found to be the optimum addition level. The addition of 1% nanometakaolin acts as an ultra-filler and refines the microstructure of concrete. Furthermore, nanometakaolin also produces a secondary hydration product by optimizing the remaining calcium hydroxide which was not fully removed during the hydration period.