EditorialAdvanced Cementitious Building Materials with Applications inCivil Engineering
Peng Zhang,1 Song Han,2 Serina Ng,3 and Xu-HaoWang4
1School of Water Conservancy and Environment Engineering, Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou 450001, China2School of Civil Engineering, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing 100044, China3Department of Materials and Structures, SINTEF Building and Infrastructure, 7465 Trondheim, Norway4National Concrete Pavement Technology Center, Iowa State University, Ames, IA 50011, USA
Correspondence should be addressed to Peng Zhang; [email protected]
Received 13 June 2017; Accepted 13 June 2017; Published 11 July 2017
Copyright © 2017 Peng Zhang et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License,which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Cementitious building material is most extensively used as akind of architectural materials in latter day and is the largestartificial material at present. With the high developmentof construction industry, many building structures withlong span, high strength, and great height are being con-structed or used under harsh conditions, which has higherrequirements on cementitious building materials. Advancedcementitious buildingmaterials can be defined as the cemen-titious building materials that can meet special combinationsof properties and uniformity requirements, which cannotalways be achieved routinely using traditional raw materialsand conventional mixing, placing, and curing methods. Thefactors which justify the popularity of advanced cementitiousbuilding materials are high strength, high workability, andhigh durability for various structural purposes [1]. Compres-sive strength of the cementitious material which is usuallyapplied to evaluate the quality of cementitious material andits applicability for purpose is a major component in rationalstructure design. Today, the durability is also a major aspectto be considered in civil engineering structure design as theimportance of durability of cementitious materials is beingmore andmore accepted and emphasized [2]. A large numberof investigators are devoting themselves to developments ofadvanced cementitious building materials and also study-ing on the mechanism research for peculiar performance,manufacturing technique, experiment methods, modeling,and applications of various advanced cementitious buildingmaterials. Generally, there are a lot of approaches to obtainadvanced cementitious materials. In general, specific bindingmaterials, aggregates, and additives can be incorporated into
the conventional cementitious materials to obtain advancedcementitious materials. For example, some extraordinaryaggregates [3], chemical additives [4], various fibers [5, 6],and mineral admixtures [7, 8] can be added to fabricateadvanced cementitious building materials.
Cementitious building materials have significant newprogresses in recent years. The advanced cementitious build-ingmaterials will provide bettermaterials for specific projectsin civil engineering. This special issue aims to bring inves-tigators from industry and academia together to report andexplore the new investigations techniques, new preparationmethods and basic material properties, testing methods, andstandardization in civil engineering, fresh properties andconstructability, shrinkage and creep, structural performanceand modeling, functional coatings for buildings, durabil-ity and sustainability, and field applications in advancedcementitious buildingmaterials and review the latest progressin this field. The advanced cementitious building materialsinclude common cementitious composites building mate-rials, cementitious pavement materials, high-performanceconcrete and ultrahigh-performance concrete, high-ductilityand fibre-reinforced materials, and self-sensing/self-healingconcrete.Out of about twenty-five submittedmanuscripts, sixresearchmanuscripts have been selected andpublished in thisspecial issue because of their good quality and relevance tothe theme of this special issue. The selected articles addressvarious aspects, including bond performance between theconcretematrix with different initial crackwidth and the steelbars with different diameters, mechanical properties of dif-ferent contents of rubber particles modified cement mortar,
HindawiAdvances in Civil EngineeringVolume 2017, Article ID 9654910, 3 pageshttps://doi.org/10.1155/2017/9654910
2 Advances in Civil Engineering
and experiments and finite element analysis of mechanicalproperties of steel fiber-reinforced concrete T-beams, punch-ing shear and impact resistance of steel fiber-reinforced slag-based geopolymer concrete,mechanical response ofmodifiedPortland cement concrete containing crumb-rubber, andnumerical simulations of restrained shrinkage cracking inglass fiber-reinforced shotcrete slabs.
The paper titled “Bond Effects between Concrete andSteel Bar Using Different Diameter Bars and Different InitialCrack Width” is authored by P.N. Faye et al. They conductedthe standard pull-out test and distribution of chloride iontest for the bond specimens and measured the bond strengthto evaluate the combined effect of different diameter barsembedded in cracked concrete and different initial crackwidth on the bond properties between concrete and steelbars. In the study, they artificially made four widths of initialcrack of 0, 80, 150, and 210 microns by inserting slice intobond specimens during the casting of concrete. Besides, theyadopted three bar diameters of 10mm, 14mm, and 18mm.After being cured for 28 days, the bond specimens wereexposed to the environment of wet-dry cycles of seawater andatmosphere for another 90 days.Their results indicate that thecrackswithwidth less than 80microns for the specimenswith10mm diameter embedded bar rapidly disappeared duringthe course of wet-dry cycles, and the crack width below 150microns decreased slightly. However, the crack width over200 microns will increase gradually. The chloride content ofthe specimens increased with the increase of initial crackwidth or the diameter of the embedded bar. Furthermore,the chloride content decreased with the increase of concretedepth.
G. Xue and M. Cao conducted a study on the influenceof modified rubber particles mixing content on propertiesof cement mortar. They prepared the cement mortar con-taining crumb-rubber using the crumb-rubber aggregatesin 60 mesh, which have been modified by 1% polyvinylalcohol solution.The properties of the cementmortar includecompressive strength, impact resistance, flexural strength, theratio of compressive strength to flexural strength, and drycontraction percentage. In their study, five rubber dosages of7.5%, 15%, 19%, 22.5%, and 30% were selected. The optimalcontent of crumb-rubber was determined by three measuredparameters: dry contraction percentage, impact resistance,and the ratio of compressive strength to flexural strength.Their results showed that the ratio of compressive strength toflexural strength has the minimum value when the contentof modified rubber particles is 19%. At the same time, themodified mortar exhibits high rational drying shrinkageand high impact resistance with the rubber content of 19%.Therefore, the authors considered 19% as the optimal usedamount of the modified rubber particles in their study.
The paper titled “Experimental Research and Finite Ele-ment Analysis on Mechanical Property of SFRC T-Beam” isauthored by M. Sun et al. Through a series of experiments ofone common concrete T-beam and two steel fiber-reinforcedconcrete T-beams using two-point loading method, theyinvestigate the effect of different steel fiber volume contentson the ultimate shear capacity, integral rigidity, and the crackdistribution characteristics, and the relevant influencing
mechanism was analyzed. They also simulated the experi-ment results obtained using ANSYS software and found thatthe simulation results of ANSYS were well accordant with thetest results. Both of the results of experiments and ANSYSsoftware simulation indicated that the addition of steel fibersgreatly increased the ultimate shear capacity and integralrigidity of the concrete, and the propagation of cracks can bepartially reduced effectively by the addition of steel fibers.Theresults also indicate that ANSYS software can be applied toaccurately simulate the mechanical properties of steel fiber-reinforced T-beam.
S. Karunanithi in the paper titled “Experimental Studieson Punching Shear and Impact Resistance of Steel FibreReinforced Slag Based Geopolymer Concrete” carried out aseries of punching shear tests and impact tests to evaluate thepunching shear and impact resistance of steel fiber-reinforcedslag-based geopolymer concrete. The related response ofthe slag-based geopolymer concrete under shear load andsudden impact load was determined. Besides, the authortook the scanning electron microscope (SEM) images forthe slag-based geopolymer samples with alkali activators andaccelerators and carried out the Energy-Dispersive X-raySpectroscopy (EDX) analysis on the hardened samples ofslag-based geopolymer paste. The various dosages of steelfiber added to the slag-based geopolymer concrete in thatstudy include 0.5%, 1.0%, and 1.5%. From the results, it canbe found that the slag-based geopolymer concrete with thebinder to aggregate ratio of 0.22 and fine to coarse aggregateratio of 0.6, reinforced by 1.0% volume dosage of steelfibers, exhibited higher punching shear force, better energyabsorption, and higher first crack toughness and ultimatefailure toughness.Within the scope of the fiber dosages in thisstudy, 1% of steel fiber is the optimal volume content for theslag-based geopolymer concrete to obtain better punchingshear and impact resistance.
The paper titled “Influence of Crumb-Rubber in theMechanical Response of Modified Portland Cement Con-crete” is authored by J. Retama and A.G. Ayala. Theyconducted a series of experiments to study the influenceof crumb-rubber on the mechanical properties of Portlandcement concrete. In their study, three different contentsof crumb-rubber and the Disk-Shaped Compact Tensionspecimen geometry, normed by the D7313-13 of the ASTM,were used to prepare the concrete. Based on the hypothesisthat the stone aggregate replaced with crumb-rubber inthe concrete mixture can modify the energy dissipationduring the course of cracking process and can affect theconcrete properties under monotonically increasing loads,they also carried out the numerical simulations to simulatethe damage evolution of the concrete, applying the numericalmodel of Embedded Discontinuity Method (EDM). Theirexperiment results indicated that the rubber fineness usedin their study has great influence on the fracture energyand other properties of concrete. The numerical simulationresults showed that good approximation of the experimentalcurve in the elastic and softening branches can be providedby using the numerical methods in their study.
A. Sjolander and A. Ansell in the paper titled “NumericalSimulations of Restrained Shrinkage Cracking in Glass Fibre
Advances in Civil Engineering 3
Reinforced Shotcrete Slabs” demonstrated a method for non-linear numerical simulations to study the differences in stressbuild-up and cracking behavior of restrained shotcrete slabssubjected to shrinkage. Through the numerical simulation,they obtained the influence of the irregular shape and varyingthickness on the cracking properties of the shotcrete. Byvarying the fracture energy in bending and in the interactionbetween shotcrete and the substrate, the influences of glassfiber reinforcement and bond were obtained in their study.Their results indicated that an end-restrained shotcrete slabwas prone to shrinkage-induced cracking, and it is importantfor the continuous bond to avoid wide shrinkage cracks whenshotcrete is sprayed directly onto the rock.
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank the authors who have submittedmanuscripts to this special issue. We would also like toacknowledge the referees who have put in the hard workand their valuable time to review each paper in a timely andprofessional way. The lead editor thanks all the editors fortheir contribution in reviewing and assigning reviews for thesubmitted manuscripts.
Peng ZhangSong HanSerina Ng
Xu-Hao Wang
References
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[2] H.-S. Shi, B.-W. Xu, and X.-C. Zhou, “Influence of mineraladmixtures on compressive strength, gas permeability andcarbonation of high performance concrete,” Construction andBuilding Materials, vol. 23, no. 5, pp. 1980–1985, 2009.
[3] A. Remadnia, R. M. Dheilly, B. Laidoudi, and M. Queneudec,“Use of animal proteins as foaming agent in cementitious con-crete composites manufactured with recycled PET aggregates,”Construction and Building Materials, vol. 23, no. 10, pp. 3118–3123, 2009.
[4] J. Y. Wang, N. Banthia, and M. H. Zhang, “Effect of shrinkagereducing admixture on flexural behaviors of fiber reinforcedcementitious composites,” Cement and Concrete Composites,vol. 34, no. 4, pp. 443–450, 2012.
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