Confined Water in Layered Silicates: The Origin of Anomalous Thermal Expansion Behavior in Calcium-Silicate-Hydrates

Thermodynamics of water confined in porous calcium-silicate-hydrates.

Water within pores of cementitious materials plays a crucial role in the damage processes of cement pastes, particularly in the binding material comprising calcium-silicate-hydrates (C-S-H). Here, we employed Grand Canonical Monte Carlo simulations to investigate the properties of water confined at ambient temperature within and between C-S-H nanoparticles or "grains" as a function of the relat...

Hydration water and microstructure in calcium silicate and aluminate hydrates

Understanding the state of the hydration water and the microstructure development in a cement paste is likely to be the key for the improvement of its ultimate strength and durability. In order to distinguish and characterize the reacted and unreacted water, the single-particle dynamics of water molecules in hydrated calcium silicates (C3S, C2S) and aluminates (C3A, C4AF) were studied by quasi-...

Nanostructure of calcium silicate hydrates in cements.

Calcium silicate hydrate (CSH) is the major volume phase in the matrix of Portland cement concrete. Total x-ray scattering measurements with synchrotron x rays on synthetic CSH(I) shows nanocrystalline ordering with a particle diameter of 3.5(5) nm, similar to a size-broadened 1.1 nm tobermorite crystal structure. The CSH component in hydrated tricalcium silicate is found to be similar to CSH(I...

The origin of uniaxial negative thermal expansion in layered perovskites

Estimation of the Elastic Properties of Important Calcium Silicate Hydrates in Nano Scale - a Molecular Dynamics Approach

Approximately, 50 to 70 percent of hydration products in hydrated cement paste are polymorphisms of C-S-H gel. It is highly influential in the final properties of hardened cement paste. Distinguishing C-S-H nano-structure significantly leads to determine its macro scale ensemble properties. This paper is dealt with nano-scale modeling. To achieve this, the most important C-S-H compounds, with a...