Assessment of Heat of Hydration of High-Strength Concrete: Fid-Bau Portal

Assessment of Heat of Hydration of High-Strength Concrete

Madusanka, S. A. P. / Yapa, H. D.

Even though Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC) concrete has been studied for decades, the hydration process of OPC and blended cement are still a source of scientific controversy. The process of hydration is highly complicated as it is combined with various influencing factors on hydration kinetics, dissolution, and precipitation reactions. Since cement hydration is an exothermic process, the low conductivity of concrete leads to an accumulation of heat in the core of the structure. Therefore, a huge temperature gradient will propagate and cause crucial internal cracking. Even though the propagation of thermal cracks is inevitable, it is indispensable to control temperature development. Hence forecasting the heat evolution is extremely vital. One of the major predominant parameters of early temperature assessment in each concrete structure is its rate of heat of hydration. Although several experimental methods were employed towards the assessment of heat propagation, upgraded analytical approaches also provide better predictions on quantifying the temperature development and heat generation rate of the structure relevant to the given mix proportion. However, there is a dearth of existing data to expand these analytical models in the case of high-strength concrete with different SCM blends. In this light, the conduction of semi-adiabatic experiments to expand the existing databases of the heat of hydration on high-strength concrete mixes and the effect of using silica fume as a supplementary cementitious material was discussed in this context. The increase in silica fume content and carboxylic admixture concentration lengthen the period of dormancy, and the peak temperature rise is directly correlated with binder content, according to the results. Although the FEA approaches provide a good correlation with normal-strength concrete, analytic models for high-strength concrete must be amended.