Creep properties of cement and alkali activated fly ash materials using nanoindentation technique

Abstract

This paper presents creep properties of cement and alkali activated fly ash (AAFA) paste and mortar determined from statistical analysis of nanoindentation data. Cement paste having 95 MPa compressive strength at 28 days was tested for comparison and validation with a conventional test. Using nanoindentation, the specific creep of the cement paste after one year was predicted as 18.32 microstrain/MPa. For AAFA samples, an experimental program was set up using Taguchi's Design of Experiment method to consider four parameters, silica fume, sand to binder ratio, liquid to solid ratio, and superplasticiser, each with three variations.Using ANOVA, the percentage contributions of these parameters ..