White mud is a solid waste from the papermaking industry, composed mainly of CaCO₃ and residual alkali metal ions (such as Na+, Mg²⁺). In the current study, the feasibility of using white mud as partial replacement of slag in alkali activated materials is explored. The fluidity, setting time, autogenous shrinkage, mechanical properties, hydration products and microstructure of alkali activated slag containing different amount of white mud are studied. The results show that adding white mud reduces the fluidity of freshly mixed paste, setting time and autogenous shrinkage. The ions released from the white mud participate in the polymerization reaction, accelerate the hydration reaction in the early stage, and promotes the precipitation of Mg-Al and the formation of hydrotalcite. However, excessive quantities of white mud (above 15% of the binder) leads to the reduction of compressive strength. As the content of white mud is enhanced, the Ca/(Si + Al) ratio of the gel increases and the degree of polymerization is reduced. It has been shown that white mud has potential reactivity and can partially replace slag to prepare new alkali activated materials.

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The mechanical performance of engineered cementitious composite (ECC) depends greatly on fiber orientation and distribution. In this paper, the effect of fiber orientation on ECC's mechanical properties was investigated using two different casting methods: a flow-induced casting was used to enhance the fiber orientation within ECC mixture and compared with the conventional casting. The fiber orientation was quantified using scanning electron microscope (SEM) and image processing. Mechanical tests on the specimens with various fiber orientations were performed. The failure processes of ECC specimens under compression and tensile tests were analyzed using digital image correlation (DIC) technique. The proposed flow-induced casting enhanced the fiber alignment in the flow direction. Consequently, ECC's mechanical properties were significantly improved with more finer cracks under uniaxial loading. In conclusion, the proposed flow-induced casting can be adopted as an effective approach to improve fiber bridging efficiency in ECC.@en

This paper presents a research on the chloride penetration behavior of engineered cementitious composites (ECC) under sustained flexural loads. Three load levels, i.e. 30 %, 60 % and 75 % of the ultimate flexural load were used. Chloride diffusion depth and concentration profile were measured 30, 60 and 150 days after the specimen was exposed to NaCl solution and compared with pre-loaded specimens. Influence of the sustained local bending stress and microcracks were investigated. It shows that under sustained loads, the relationship between the surface chloride content and maximum normal tensile stress can be described using an exponential equation. A binary model was developed to explain the correlation among the chloride ion diffusion coefficient, maximum normal tensile stress and exposure time. Changes of capillary pore structure and phase compositions were measured using mercury intrusion porosimeter and X-ray diffraction, respectively. Unlike mortar, the fiber bridging of ECC helps with limiting crack width and thus the diffusion process, and the measured results were used to explain the observed penetration behavior of ECC. It is believed that the current study provides theoretical foundation for the durable design of the ECC/concrete composite structure.

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The performance of engineered cementitious composites (ECCs) under coupled salt freezing and loaded conditions is important for its application on the transportation infrastructure. However, in most of the studies, the specimens were generally loaded prior to the freezing. The influence of sustained load was merely considered. To this end, four sustained deflection levels, i.e., 0%, 10%, 30% and 50% of the deflection at the ultimate flexural strength, and three salt concentrations (1%, 3% and 5%) were applied. Prior to the salt frost resistance test, the fluid absorption of ECC specimens under various conditions were measured. The changes in relative dynamic elastic modulus (RDEM) during the freeze–thaw cycles were captured. The depth and the content profile of free chloride were measured after the coupled sustained load and freezing and thawing cycles. It is shown that 3% NaCl solution leads to the largest deterioration in all cases. There is no visible flaking or damage occurring on the surface. The relationships between locally sustained flexural stress and RDEM loss and also locally sustained flexural stress and free chloride penetration depth were proposed and showed satisfactory results. It is concluded that when ECC is subjected to the FTCs under 1% de-ice salt solution, no depassivation of the steel is expected even under a large deflection level. In terms of 3% and 5% salt solution, the thickness of cover should be no less than 20 mm when a deflection level of 0.5 is applied.

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This paper presents a study on cracking characterization of engineered cementitious composites (ECC) under flexural cyclic load using digital image correlation (DIC) technique. Five stress levels, namely 0.65, 0.75, 0.8, 0.85 and 0.9 of the flexural strength, were applied. Strain map at the side surface was obtained by DIC and used to drive evolution of the midspan deflection, damage pattern, maximum crack width, number of cracks, and crack width distribution with respect to the normalized number of cycles. The stress level was found to have a significant influence on the cracking behavior of ECC under flexural cyclic load. Regardless of the applied stress level, most of the crack widths are in the range between 20 and 80 μm. In the end, a two-dimension Gauss function was used to correlate the crack width distribution with normalized number of cycle and shows satisfactory results.@en

Engineered cementitious composites (ECCs) belong to a broad class of fibre-reinforced concrete. They incorporate synthetic polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) fibres, cement, fly ash and fine aggregates, and are designed to have a tensile strain capacity typically beyond 3%. This paper presents an investigation on the carbonation behaviour of engineered cementitious composites (ECCs) under coupled sustained flexural load and accelerated carbonation. The carbonation depth under a sustained stress level of 0, 0.075, 0.15, 0.3 and 0.6 relative to flexural strength was measured after 7, 14 and 28 days of accelerated carbonation. Thermogravimetric analysis, mercury intrusion porosimetry and microhardness measurements were carried out to show the coupled influence of sustained flexural load and accelerated carbonation on the changes of the mineral phases, porosity, pore size distribution and microhardness along the carbonation profile. A modified carbonation depth model that can be used to consider the coupled effect of flexural tensile stress and carbonation time was proposed. The results show that an exponential relationship can be observed between stress influence coefficient and flexural tensile stress level in the carbonation depth model of ECC, which is different when using plain concrete. Areas with a higher carbonation degree have greater microhardness, even under a large sustained load level, as the carbonation process refines the pore structure and the fibre bridges the crack effectively.

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The resistance of cracked ECC against chloride ingress is mainly governed by the accumulated crack width of all the cracks rather than the maximum width of multiple cracks. However, most studies focus on the influence of a single fine crack@en

This work presents a study of mechanical properties of foamed concrete at the meso-scale based on a combination of X-ray computed tomography (XCT) technique and a discrete lattice type fracture model. The microstructure of the foamed concrete with different densities was obtained by XCT technique and binarized as two-phase (pore/solid) materials. The parameters (e.g., porosity, pore diameter and spacing distribution) of foamed concrete air‐void structure were characterized. The virtual specimens were subjected to computational uniaxial compression, Brazilian splitting and three-point bending test to calculate strengths and elastic modulus. The mechanical properties of solid phase were derived from the recent outcome of micromechanical models. Two types of element input parameters were used to investigate the influence of the input parameters on the simulated results. The modelling results (strength value and fracture pattern) were compared with the experiments. It shows that, without further calibration, the lattice model can predict the mechanical strength and crack pattern with good accuracy. The fracture toughness KIC was derived using three-point bending strength and the average pore diameter. The results indicate that the presence of air-void structure increases the brittleness and reduces the fracture toughness of the foamed concrete.@en

Carbide residue activated blast furnace slag is a relatively new kind of eco-friendly construction materials. This work addresses the design of foamed lightweight concrete as road embankment material using such material. A statistical mixture design approach was adopted to assess the influence of each ingredient as well as the interaction between these on the spreadability and compressive strength and thus allowing mixture design. The fitted models were validated using analysis of variance, residual analysis and confirmed by the experiments. Afterwards, the proposed models were used to optimize the mixture. The mixture with the highest compressive strength and the maximum content of carbide residue that allows the mixture to meet the required properties were obtained, respectively.

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