Journal article

Regulating the chemical foaming reaction to control the porosity of geopolymer foams

A Hajimohammadi, T Ngo, P Mendis, J Sanjayan

Materials and Design | Published : 2017

Abstract

In lightweight geopolymers foamed with aluminium powder, it is desirable to increase the porosity without increasing the amount of aluminium usage. In this study, the kinetics of aluminium reaction is manipulated to increase the porosity of geopolymers without adding extra foaming agent, and the impact on porosity development and the characteristics of binding skeleton is investigated. It is shown that adjusting the ratio of alkali activators regulates the oxidation rate of aluminium powder and impacts the extent of foaming. Samples with higher aluminium oxidation rate developed higher porosities and reached lower densities without adding more foaming agent. Size distribution of the voids be..

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University of Melbourne Researchers

Grants

Awarded by Australian Research Council


Funding Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge the financial support from the ARC Linkage Grant LP140100504 [grant number LP140100504, 2014]. This work is performed in part at the Materials Characterisation and Fabrication Platform (MCFP) at the University of Melbourne and the Victorian Node of the Australian National Fabrication Facility (ANFF).