Pore structure of concrete containing ternary cementitious blends

Abstract

This paper presents the experimental work results of tested samples of nine concrete mixtures. The mixtures prepared with water to cementitious blends ratio of 0.4, 0.5 and 0.6. The mixtures include Portland cement, fly ash, and silica fume as ternary system of cementitious blends. The measured properties of concrete comprise air content, slump, and unit weight for the fresh state while the measured properties for the hardened concrete include compressive and tensile strengths, static and dynamic young’s moduli’s and pulse velocity. The pore structure attributes of concrete which involve, total pore volume, total pore surface area, average pore diameter and distributions of pore size were studied. The pore structure of studied mixtures investigated using Mercury Intrusion Porosimetry (MIP). The obtained results indicate that incorporating cementitious blends as ternary systems generally show significant improvement in various studies properties of concrete. Furthermore, the results indicate that pore structure characteristics and the distributions of the pore size are changed by used cementitious materials as well as water to cementitious blends ratio.