Reuse of sanitary ceramic wastes as coarse aggregate in eco-efficient concretes

The sanitary ceramics industry inevitably generates wastes, irrespective of the improvements introduced in manufacturing processes. The present study investigated the reuse of these wastes as recycled coarse aggregate in partial substitution (15%, 20% and 25%) of natural coarse aggregates in the manufacture of structural concretes. The results demonstrate that recycled, eco-efficient concretes present superior mechanical behaviour compared to conventional concrete and it was moreover appreciated that the recycled ceramic aggregate does not interfere in a negative way during the hydration process. It was also observed that the microstructure in the interfacial transition zone (ITZ) between recycled ceramic aggregate and paste was more compact than in the case of natural aggregate and paste.     

Carbonation behaviour of recycled aggregate concrete

This paper reviews the effect of incorporating recycled aggregates, sourced from construction and demolition waste, on the carbonation behaviour of concrete. It identifies various influencing aspects related to the use of recycled aggregates, such as replacement level, size and origin, as well as the influence of curing conditions, use of chemical admixtures and additions, on carbonation over a long period of time. A statistical analysis on the effect of introducing increasing amounts of recycled aggregates on the carbonation depth and coefficient of accelerated carbonation is presented. This paper also presents the use of existing methodologies to estimate the required accelerated carbonation resistance of a reinforced recycled aggregate concrete exposed to natural carbonation conditions with the use of accelerated carbonation tests. Results show clear increasing carbonation depths with increasing replacement levels when recycled aggregate concrete mixes are made with a similar mix design to that of the control natural aggregate concrete. The relationship between the compressive strength and coefficients of accelerated carbonation is similar between the control concrete and the recycled aggregate concrete mixes.     

Structural concrete with incorporation of coarse recycled concrete and ceramic aggregates: durability performance

The growing difficulty in obtaining natural coarse aggregates (NCA) for the production of concrete, associated to the environmental issues and social costs that the uncontrolled extraction of natural aggregates creates, led to a search for feasible alternatives. One of the possible paths is to reuse construction and demolition waste (CDW) as aggregates to incorporate into the production of new concrete. Therefore, a vast and detailed experimental campaign was implemented at Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), which aimed at determining the viability of incorporating coarse aggregates from concrete and ceramic brick wall debris, in the production of a new concrete, with properties acceptable for its use in new reinforced and pre-stressed structures. In the experimental campaign different compositions were studied by incorporating pre-determined percentages of recycled coarse concrete aggregates and recycled coarse ceramic plus mortar particles, and the main mechanical, deformability and durability properties were quantified, by comparison with a conventional reference concrete (RC). In this article, these results are presented in terms of the durability performance of concrete, namely water absorption, carbonation and chlorides penetration resistance.     

Durability of recycled aggregate concrete prepared with carbonated recycled concrete aggregates

The mechanical properties of recycled aggregate concrete (RAC) incorporating carbonated recycled concrete aggregates (RCAs) have previously been reported. However, the durability of RAC prepared with carbonated RCAs remains to be accessed. In this study, the durability properties of RAC prepared with non-carbonated RCAs and carbonated RCAs, in terms of deformation (drying shrinkage), water absorption and permeability (bulk electrical conductivity, gas and chloride ion permeability), are presented. The experimental results indicated that: (i) the incorporation of the carbonated RCAs in RAC not only helped to reduce the water absorption of RAC, but also reduced its permeability; (ii) when 100% carbonated NRCAs was used, the improvement extent of impermeability was 15.1%, 36.4% and 42.4% for bulk electrical conductivity, chloride ion permeability and gas permeability, respectively. Comparing the results of the mechanical and durability properties, the CO₂ curing treatment of RCAs had a greater beneficial impact on the durability properties of the RAC; and (iii) there was a good correlation between the water absorption of RAC and its permeability indicators. The water absorption value of RAC may be used as a criterion of the durability of RAC.     

Optimization of normal and high strength recycled aggregate concrete mixtures by using packing model

This paper analyzes the possibility of applying the Compressible Packing Model (CPM) for the proportion of concrete mixtures produced with Recycled Concrete Aggregates (RCAs). As a matter of fact, the RCAs are composed of natural aggregates and attached mortar and, as a consequence, they generally present a higher porosity in comparison with ordinary natural aggregates. The higher porosity of RCAs can affect the resulting Recycled Aggregate Concretes (RACs) properties and, for this reason, the mix design procedure available in literature for ordinary concrete mixture cannot be applied as such in the case of RACs. In this context, the present work first presents a preliminary study in which the optimal mixing procedure for RACs is investigated and then, a possible extension of the CPM in the case of RACs is analyzed. Several structural RAC mixtures were designed for three strength classes (25, 45 and 65 MPa) by considering the variation of the aggregate replacement from 0 to 100%. Finally, the proposed procedure is experimentally validated by performing mechanical and durability tests on selected mixtures for the three strength classes with a RCAs content up to 60%. The results reported herein demonstrate the applicability of the CPM for recycled concrete mixtures and highlight as the rational use of RCAs lead to produce structural RAC without affecting its mechanical and the durability performance.     

Enhancement of recycled aggregate properties by accelerated CO2 curing coupled with limewater soaking process

Strengthening the attached old cement mortar of recycled concrete aggregate (RCA) is a common approach to enhance the RCA properties. Accelerated CO₂ curing has been regarded as an alternative way to enhance the properties of RA. However, the improvement of the properties of RCA was limited by the shortage of reactive components in the old cement mortar available for the carbonation reactions. In this study, a CO₂ curing process associated with a limewater saturation method was performed cyclically on cement mortar samples, aiming to enhance the properties of cement mortars via artificially introducing additional calcium into the pores of the cement mortars. The results indicated that the adopted treatment method promoted the level of carbonation which was demonstrated by higher CO₂ uptake by the limewater saturated cement mortar when compared to that without limewater treatment. After 3-cycles of limewater-CO₂ treatment, the density of the cement mortar slightly increased by 5.7%, while the water absorption decreased by over a half. For mechanical properties, the compressive and flexural strength were increased by 22.8% and 42.4%, respectively. Compared to the untreated cement mortar samples, the total porosity of cement mortar was reduced by approximately 33% and the densified microstructure therefore resulted in a higher microhardness.     

Effect of polypropylene fibers on shrinkage and cracking of concretes

The effects of admixed polypropylene (PP) fibers on the drying shrinkage of hardened concrete are presented in this paper. Concrete mixtures made with Ordinary Portland cement (OPC) and OPC/Slag blended cements containing various volume fractions of PP fiber were tested. The results show small but consistently higher drying shrinkages in concretes incorporating PP fibers than that without fiber. The effect is more pronounced in slag concretes and in concretes cured for only 1 day. An attempt to explain this phenomenon was made by water loss, nitrogen adsorption, sorptivity and scanning electron microscopy tests on the same concretes. Additional moisture loss and porosity are proposed as possible reasons. The results of early-age restrained shrinkage tests on slag concretes show that PP fiber concrete had higher cracking tendency than the concrete without fiber. This was found to be due to higher shrinkage and elastic modulus of PP fiber concrete.     

Mechanical behavior of recycled coarse aggregate concrete reinforced with steel fibers under direct shear

Recycled coarse aggregate (RCA) concrete has attracted more and more attention worldwide in recent years due to the exhaustion of natural coarse aggregate and environmental pollution from construction and demolition waste in civil engineering. In this study, experiments were carried out on over 100 specimens to investigate the mechanical properties and failure mode of concrete with different volume content of steel fibers (0%, 0.5%, 1%, 1.5%, and 2%) and different RCA replacement ratio (0%, 30%, 50% and 100%) under direct shear load. The results show that addition of steel fibers can effectively improve the shear strength and shear toughness of RCA concrete. For a given compressive strength, the RCA replacement ratio has negligible impact on shear strength, but shear deformation and toughness increase as RCA replacement ratio reaches above a ‘limiting value’. A shear strength formula for steel fiber reinforced RCA concrete (SFRCAC) based on compressive strength and characteristic coefficient of steel fiber has been put forward.     

Performance evaluation of structural concrete using controlled quality coarse and fine recycled concrete aggregate

This paper presents the fresh, mechanical, and durability performance, of a structural concrete mix classified as C-1, by the Canadian Standards Association (CSA) made with controlled quality Recycled Concrete Aggregate (RCA). Five mixes with water-to-cementing material (w/cm) ratio of 0.40 were produced with various RCA contents and tested against two 0% RCA control mixes made with General Use (GU) cement, and General Use Limestone cement (GUL). The RCA contents in the mixes were 10%, 20%, and 30% by coarse aggregate volume replacement, as well as 10% and 20% fine and coarse (granular) aggregate volume replacement. All evaluated mixes met the specifications from the CSA for fresh, mechanical, and durability properties. The coarse RCA mixes performed better than the granular RCA mixes in terms of flexural and splitting tensile strengths, linear drying shrinkage, water sorptivity, and rapid chloride-ion permeability, where the test results were significantly affected by the ultra fines present in the granular RCA.     

Prediction model of carbonation depth for recycled aggregate concrete

The prediction of carbonation depth for recycled aggregate concrete (RAC) is investigated in this paper. The existing prediction models were evaluated, and it showed that the coefficient of variation (COV) of model error for the existing models is high. By introducing the weighed water absorption of aggregates, the COV of model error can be effectively decreased. Compared with the existing models, the proposed model can predict more accurate carbonation depths. For RAC specimens, compared with the fib model and Xiao and Lei's model-a, the COV of model error of the proposed model is 0.36 which is decreased by 33.3%, and when compared with Xiao and Lei's model-b and Silva et al.’s model, the corresponding decreases are 55.2% and 16.2%. Finally, the proposed model is validated by a 10-year-old carbonation experiment, which indicates that the proposed model is reasonable and can be applied to predict the carbonation depth of RAC.     

Determination of construction and demolition recycled aggregates composition,in considering their heterogeneity

This paper analyzes the influence of the mass sample and the sampling procedure on the composition determination error of recycled aggregates from construction and demolition (C&D) waste, as well as the criterion of classification of mineral materials, establishing new standard recommendations. The precise composition determination depends on the mass sample as stated by the Theory of Sampling. This mass should be higher than that recommended by the EN 932-1, especially for the determination of foreign materials such as gypsum and organic materials. Special sampling procedures should be considered. By the application of the oven-dry density distribution criterion the concrete aggregate studied could fulfill the requirements for concrete use due to a more accurate quantification of particles denser than 2.0 g/cm³ compared to the visual analysis. Thus, the use of such criterion results in a more objective and a better comprehensible classification.     

Residue strength,water absorption and pore size distributions of recycled aggregate concrete after exposure to elevated temperatures

In this paper, the effects of high temperature exposure of recycled aggregate concretes in terms of residual strengths, capillary water absorption capacity and pore size distribution are discussed. Two mineral admixtures, fly ash (FA) and ground granulated blast furnace (GGBS) were used in the experiment to partially replace ordinary Portland cement for concrete production. The water to cementitious materials ratio was maintained at 0.50 for all the concrete mixes. The replacement levels of natural aggregates by recycled aggregates were at 0%, 50% and 100%. The concretes were exposed separately to 300 °C, 500 °C and 800 °C, and the compressive and splitting tensile strength, capillary water coefficient, porosity and pore size distribution were determined before and after the exposure to the high temperatures. The results show that the concretes made with recycled aggregates suffered less deteriorations in mechanical and durability properties than the concrete made with natural aggregates after the high temperature exposures.     

The effect of recycled plastic aggregate on chemico-physical and functional properties of composite mortars

In this paper the interaction mechanism between recycled plastic aggregates and lime matrix in composite mortars was investigated by means of thermal, morphological and Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR) analyses. In order to assess the fire behavior of the composite mortars, a cone calorimeter method was adopted. The plastic aggregate, mainly made of polyolefin and polyethylene terephthalate, is obtained from an industrial waste, through a process that provides a plasticization and densification by extrusion of plastic waste. Several composite mortars were prepared by replacing silica powder with 10%, 15% and 20% of recycled aggregate. Experimental results attest that, even if the filler was not chemically modified, there is a good chemical interaction between the plastic aggregate and mortar, involving a reduction of the negative effects on physical and functional properties of the mortar composites, such as thermal degradation and fire resistance. In fact all the specimens showed a scarce sensitivity to flashover, and can be classified as low risk materials.     

Properties of interfacial transition zones (ITZs) in concrete containing recycled mixed aggregate

Concretes containing mixed recycled aggregate (RA) have a larger number of coarse aggregate/paste interfacial transition zones (ITZs) than conventional concretes, due to the various component materials present in recycled aggregate. This study investigated the properties of various RA/paste ITZs in concrete using nanoindentation and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and analysed the possible impact of the properties of the ITZs on the macro-mechanical performance of recycled concrete. It was found that the elastic modulus of the ITZ varies with the type of constituent materials present in recycled aggregate, with ITZs associated with organic components (e.g. wood, plastic and asphalt) exhibiting lower minimum elastic modulus values. The impact of ITZ properties on macro-mechanical properties of concrete depends on the relative content of different constituent materials present in the recycled aggregate and the micro-mechanical properties of the ITZs involved.     

Mechanical and durability performance of sustainable structural concretes: An experimental study

This study reports the results of a wide experimental campaign intended at investigating the mechanical and durability performance of structural concretes made with Recycled Concrete Aggregates (RCAs) and coal Fly Ash (FA). To this end, twelve mixtures were designed by replacing part of the ordinary constituents (i.e. cement, sand and coarse aggregates) of a reference one with RCAs and FA. Samples of these mixtures were subjected to various tests aimed at assessing both their structural properties and durability performance. As for the former, time evolution of compressive strength was monitored at various curing times up to 365 days, and the splitting strength was determined at 28 days. Moreover, the expected durability performance of the aforementioned concrete mixtures was scrutinised by measuring some relevant physical quantities, such as water permeability, carbonation depth and chloride-ions ingress at various curing ages.The results obtained from these tests are often not self-evident, as they unveil the synergistic effect of combining both RCAs and FA on the resulting physical and mechanical properties of “green” concrete. Moreover, they demonstrate that the current code restrictions on the use of both RCAs and FA for structural concrete might be significantly relaxed, especially if the delayed binder effect, induced by the latter, is duly taken into account and, hence, concrete properties are measured at curing times longer than the conventional 28 days.     

废纸浆/陶瓷纤维抄造纸的性能研究

目的 节约植物纤维用量,以陶瓷纤维加填抄片,评估废纸浆/陶瓷纤维抄造纸的实用性.方法 使用KH-550硅烷偶联剂对陶瓷纤维进行表面处理,将未处理陶瓷纤维与处理的陶瓷纤维以一定比例加填到废纸纤维中,抄造手抄片,比较手抄片的紧度、撕裂度、环压强度、耐折度和抗压强度,并对手抄片的微观形貌进行观测.结果 陶瓷纤维交错分散于纸纤维之间.经过KH-550硅烷偶联剂处理的陶瓷纤维加填后,当质量分数<20％时,手抄片的撕裂度、环压强度、抗张强度随纤维含量的增加而下降;当质量分数>20％后,以上性能均随陶瓷纤维含量的增加而上升.手抄片的耐折度随含量的增加明显下降.抄片的环压强度显著提高,陶瓷纤维质量分数为40％时,环压强度为3.81 kN/m,为废纸纤维手抄片的2.06倍.结论 加填陶瓷纤维质量分数至40％,不仅节约了植物原材料,也会提高抄造纸的环压强度,可用于承受高环压强度的纸质材料.     

Fatigue resistance investigation of warm‐mix recycled asphalt binder,mastic, and fine aggregate matrix

Fatigue cracking is one of the primary distresses in warm‐mix recycled asphalt pavements. This paper evaluates the fatigue resistance evolution of warm‐mix recycled asphalt materials in different scales during the service period. The strain sweep test and time sweep test were performed, respectively, by dynamic shear rheometer to determine the linear viscoelastic limits and to characterize the fatigue behavior of warm‐mix recycled asphalt binder, mastic, and fine aggregate matrix with different ageing levels and recycling plans. The dissipated energy method was used to define the failure criterion and to construct the fatigue model. Effects of ageing levels and recycling plans on stiffness and fatigue resistance were investigated. Performance correlations among warm‐mix recycled asphalt binder, mastic, and fine aggregate matrix were developed, respectively, by the statistical method to determine the critical material scale for stiffness and fatigue resistance.     

陶瓷添加物对Ti_3SiC_2基复合材料抗氧化性的影响

为研究陶瓷添加物对Ti3SiC2基复合材料性能的影响,首先,采用反应热压烧结法制备了Ti3SiC2材料及陶瓷添加物含量均为30wt%的SiC/Ti3SiC2、Al2O3/Ti3SiC2和MgAl2O4/Ti3SiC2复合材料。然后,测试了材料的力学性能和导电性,在1 373~1 773K温度范围内对Ti3SiC2基复合材料的抗氧化性进行了研究,并对其烧结试样的物相组成和显微结构等进行了表征。结果表明:Ti3SiC2在高温氧化后的主要产物为TiO2和SiO2;氧化层分为内外2层,内层由TiO2与SiO2这2相混合组成,外层为TiO2;氧化层中存在大量显气孔,结构较为疏松,导致抗氧化性较差。与Al2O3/Ti3SiC2和MgAl2O4/Ti3SiC2复合材料相比,SiC/Ti3SiC2复合材料具有更好的抗氧化性。     

Properties of transparent Ce:YAG ceramic phosphors for white LED

Transparent Ce:YAG ceramic phosphors were synthesized from the oxide powder which was produced by co-preparation method of the hydroxides. The Ce:YAG ceramics had a broad emission band peaked at 530 nm due to the 5d → 4f transition of Ce³⁺. The transmittances of the samples obtained were 70-87% at 800 nm. The absorption coefficient and emission intensity of Ce³⁺ were increased with increasing thickness. Under 465 nm LED excitation, the color coordinates of the Ce:YAG ceramics shifted from the blue region to yellow region with increasing sample thickness, passing nearby the theoretical white point in the chromaticity diagram. The highest value of luminous efficacy of the ceramic white LED was 73.5 lm/W.     

重力分离SHS双衬陶瓷复合管的显微组织与耐蚀性

通过重力分离SHS技术制备双衬陶瓷复合管 ,发现第二衬陶瓷层的尖晶石含量和组织形貌发生改变 ,双衬陶瓷层间存在着Al2 O3 基体和 (Al2 O3 +FeO·Al2 O3 )共晶组织的重熔区 ,引起两者的裂纹密度下降 .复合管的耐蚀性测试结果表明 ,双衬陶瓷复合管的腐蚀失重率分别低于1Cr1 8Ni9Ti不锈钢管和单衬陶瓷复合管 3个和 2个数量级 .