Study of early hydration of OPC-HAC blends by microwave and calorimetry technique

Abstract

The early hydration of the Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC)-High Alumna Cement (HAC) system has been investigated by using the microwave and calorimetry methods. It is found that the hydration process of OPC-HAC systems vary with the HAC proportion. The pastes containing 20 and 25% HAC show a feature of fast setting. And the pastes containing 33% and 50% HAC show quite unusual patterns in the dielectric ε, conductivity σ and heat-evolution rate R curves. We find that the microwave method is more sensitive to the cement hydration than that of calorimetry method. The correlation of the microwave measurement results with the calorimetry measurement results is discussed. © 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.