Enhancing thixotropy of fresh cement pastes with nanoclay in presence of polycarboxylate ether superplasticizer (PCE)

By Ye Qian, G. de Schutter. Cement and Concrete Research, 2018

211 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract Nanoclay, a thermal treated, purified attapulgite clay, has been used to increase thixotropy. However, the effect of nanoclay in presence of water reducing agent, such as PCE, on rheology, and the compatibility between nanoclay and PCE have not been well studied. The dynamic yield stress, thixotropic index, characteristic time, and microstructure of fresh cement pastes with combination of nanoclay and PCE addition are measured. It is found that nanoclay has a good compatibility with PCE. Nanoclay increases the dynamic yield stress and enhances the thixotropy of fresh cement pastes with and without PCE addition. The nanoclay addition agglomerates the microstructure at high PCE addition and increases the thixotropic index from bottom value to a high value. This study gives insight of achieving low dynamic yield stress yet high static yield stress and thixotropy mixtures.

Subfields: Building and Construction, Civil and Structural Engineering, Polymers and Plastics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/1ec48a8bb783c87057cfbe240c83dcdfa5ffbb6a