Production of Advanced Foam Concrete using the Vibroturbulization Process

Abstract

Foam concrete is a building material that has found widespread use in modern construction, which is cellular concrete with a spongy structure, formed by a large number of air bubbles locked in it. This structure is formed after hardening of a special mixture, which includes: purified water; sifted sand; high quality cement; foaming agent. Foam concrete is produced using a foam generator; foam generator and dispersant; by cavitation dispersion method; by high pressure. The disadvantages of these methods are: the resulting foam concrete blocks are susceptible to cracking and have a heterogeneous structure; use of a large amount of high-quality synthetic foaming agent; increased wear of equipment and the need to use a compressor. This article presents a completely new method for producing advanced foam concrete using the vibroturbulization process. In the developed method, a vertical vibration effect on a special mixture, which includes: purified water, sifted sand, high-quality cement, placed in a tank to produce foam concrete, in the vibroturbulization process mode, produces intensive foaming of the mixture by sucking all the air above the mixture in the tank onto its the bottom and intensive periodic float and immersion in the mixture of the resulting “swarm” of microdispersed air bubbles, which leads to uniform saturation of the mixture with microdispersed air bubbles. The resulting mixture, uniformly saturated with microdispersed air bubbles, is poured through a special tap installed at the bottom of the tank into special molds for hardening and obtaining advanced foam concrete with uniformly saturated microdispersed air bubbles of a given shape.