Microstructure of wet cement pastes: A nuclear magnetic resonance study

Nuclear magnetic resonance relaxation analysis has been applied to interpret the evolution of microstructure in a cement paste during hydration. The work in this thesis has yielded a better understanding of the geometric and physical characterization of porous materials, and specifically cement pastes. A basic understanding of the wet-dry and freeze-thaw processes of cement pastes has been developed. The pore structure evolution has been studied by the suppression of the freezing temperature of water and compared with relaxation analysis performed at room temperature. Both methods consistently show that hydrating cement pastes have two principal components in their size distribution.; Firstly, in situ measurements have been made of the water consumption, the total specific surface area, and pore water size distribution as a function of hydration time. The amount of evaporable water in the pore space can be determined from the magnitude of the NMR signal, and the NMR relaxation times provide a measure of the characteristic pore sizes. Drying studies have been performed to determine the surface spin-spin relaxation time. The NMR results on evolution of cement pore structure with hydration clearly show five different stages. The water consumption was determined to be a linear function of the logarithm of hydration time over a wide range during which the total surface area of the wet gel remains constant. These experiments support a model of capillary and gel pores in the cement paste and provide strong evidence of a stable dense-gel structure.; Secondly, supercooling and thawing point depression of confined water has been studied systematically. The depression of the freezing point of liquid water confined within a pore was found to be dependent on the pore size with capillary pore water freezing at 240 K and the remaining gel pore water freezing over a temperature range extending to as low as 160 K.; Finally, an important application of NMR has been developed to monitor, in situ, the transport and chemical reaction characteristics of chloride ions in cement pastes that have been imbibed with NaCl solution. The results of this research have the potential to contribute to a more complete understanding of the durability of concrete in response to changes in both their physical and chemical environments.