Comparison Of Hydration Arresting Methods For Concrete Containing Supplementary Cementitious Materials

Abstract

This research has compared various hydration stoppage methods like a solvent exchange, oven drying, and without arresting the hydration methodsfor the microstructure analysis results. This research has carried out the X-ray Diffraction (XRD) and Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) for the abovementioned methods. The concrete samples were extracted from the concrete pore after 28 days of curing and tested at 56 days for all the methods. The extracted sample was directly kept in the ventilated oven at 105 temperature in the oven drying method. Two solvents, isopropanol and diethyl ether were used to arrest the heat of hydration in the Solvent exchange method. These two methods were compared to the without arrested hydration samples with evidence of the microstructural analysis. It is concluded that the oven drying and solvent exchange methods remove the water, but the oven drying method damages the microstructural behavior of concrete. Microstructural results data indicate that the solvent exchange using isopropanol by diethyl ether is the most reliable method for the sample preservation for the removal of water in concrete samples.