Journal article
Effects of calcium formate on early-age strength and microstructure of high-volume fly ash cement systems
Z Zhou, M Sofi, A Zhong, A Shahpasandi, MC Sarabia, P Mendis
Magazine of Concrete Research | Published : 2021
Abstract
Replacement of Portland cement (PC) by fly ash (FA) is currently limited to 15-30% by mass, mainly due to low early age strength development of concrete. This research uses calcium formate (Ca(HCO2)2; CF) as an admixture to highvolume FA (HVFA) composites to improve its strength properties. HVFA represents 60-70% of cement replaced by FA and dosage of CF varies from 0.5% up to high dosage of 9% of cement content. Compressive strength, isothermal calorimetry, thermogravimetric analysis, X-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscopy were conducted to investigate the effects of CF on hydration and microstructural aspects. The results show that both HVFA pastes with 60% and 70% FA achieved ..
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Awarded by Australian Research Council
Funding Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the Melbourne Research Scholarship offered by the University of Melbourne and the Australian Research Council's Discovery Early Career Researcher Grant (DE170100165, DE 2017 R1) for their financial support. They would also like to express their gratitude to Mr Paul Kidd and Mr Bruce Perry (Cement Australia Pty Ltd) for their in-kind support, as well as BASF Australia for providing the chemical admixture. Special thanks are due to Ms Laura Jukes for her assistance with the TGA experiments.