This article presents the results of a study dealing with the utilization of sludge water from a concrete plant as a partial replacement for mixing water in the production of cement composites. The replacement of mixing water with sludge water from a concrete plant was carried out in the amounts of 20% and 50%. The following tests were carried out in order to determine the effect of the replace...

This article provides a brief overview of several classes of fiber reinforced cement based composites and suggests future directions in FRC development. Special focus is placed on micromechanics based design methodology of strain-hardening cement based composites. As example, a particular engineered cementitious composite newly developed at the ACE-MRL at the University of Michigan is described...

The aim of this study is to develop a process to produce high-performance cement-based composites reinforced with flax nonwoven fabrics, analyzing the influence of the fabric structure-thickness and entanglement-on mechanical behavior under flexural and tensile loadings. For this purpose, composite with flax nonwoven fabrics with different thicknesses were first prepared and their cement infilt...

We investigate the performance of graphene oxide (GO) in improving mechanical properties of cement composites. A polycarboxylate superplasticizer was used to improve the dispersion of GO flakes in the cement. The mechanical strength of graphene-cement nanocomposites containing 0.1-2 wt% GO and 0.5 wt% superplasticizer was measured and compared with that of cement prepared without GO. We found t...

In this paper, Artificial Neural Network (ANN) has been used to predict the equivalent flexural strength of hybrid mesh and fiber reinforced cement-based composites (HMFRCBC). Three ANN models (Models 1, 2 and 3) were developed for predicting the flexural strength of cement-based composites. Model 1 used 48 data of the previously published data of the present authors and Model 2 used 48 data (o...

Xiangming Zhou and Zongjin Li 1 School of Engineering and Design, Brunel University, Uxbridge, Middlesex, United Kingdom UB8 3PH Tel: +44 1895 266 670, Fax: +44 1895 269 782, Email: [email protected]. 2 Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Clear Water Bay, Kowloon, Hong Kong, Tel: +852 2358 8751, Fax: +852 2358 1534, Email:...

New polymeric calcium phosphate cement composites (CPCs) were developed. Cement powder consisting of 60 wt% tetracalcium phosphate, 30 wt% dicalcium phosphate dihydrate, and 10 wt% tricalcium phosphate was combined with either 35% w/w poly methyl vinyl ether maleic acid or polyacrylic acid to obtain CPC-1 and CPC-2. The setting time and compressive and diametral tensile strength of the CPCs wer...

This paper presents an experimental investigation on the effect of uniformly dispersed graphene oxide (GO) nanosheets on dynamic mechanical properties of cement based composites prepared with recycled fine aggregate (RFA). Three different amounts of GO, 0.05%, 0.10%, and 0.20% in mass of cement, were used in the experiments. The visual inspections of GO nanosheets were also carried out after ul...

In brittle materials such as concrete and ceramics, fibre reinforcement has been widely accepted as an effective way of improving their strength and toughness. In addition, a notable pseudo strain-hardening phenomenon can contribute to a significantly enhanced ductility of the composite when an adequately designed fibre system is used. This condition was first proposed by Aveston et al. [1], an...

The uptake of 137-Cs and 90-Sr on to synthetic zeolite A has been studied. The use of a combined barium exchange followed by a relatively mild heat treatment has been shown to fix the isotopes within a collapsed zeolite structure. Leaching experiments using deionized and simulated sea and pond waters were carried out on zeolite compacts and zeolite/cement composites. They demonstrated the effec...