Preparation of Rapid-Hardening, Early-Strengthening, High-Density Composite Cement Based on Dinger–Funk Equation

Abstract

This paper develops a new numerical analysis method to achieve rapid-hardening, early-strengthening, high-performance cement-based composite material preparation based on the Dinger–Funk equation of the closest-packing model with MATLAB and the Lagrange multiplier method, as several other methods, including theoretical calculations, have many constraints when obtaining a solution and direct determination methods that waste much time in evaluating the compactness of cement gel material based on the principle of closest-packing theory. To verify these theoretical results, orthogonal tests are used. The calculated results show that the resulting gradation curve is in good agreement with the theoretical curve from the Dinger–Funk equation for the densest packing state (R2 = 97.36%). Experimental results for the dosages of steel slag and fly ash need to be very close to those suggested by the theoretical calculations; however, proper adjustment of the content of silica fume is still necessary. Adjusted neat paste has the highest compressive strength of all tested materials. The research has concluded that the method is suitable and scientific for designing high-performance, cement-based materials.