Blog
Technical notebook.
Short texts on what actually changes a concrete: heat, clay, admixture, testing. Posts marked as examples are the seed of the notebook and may be edited or replaced.
Autogenous shrinkage: concrete can crack without losing water
In a low water–cement mix, hydration dries the paste from the inside. That shrinkage does not require loss to the surroundings; external curing stays mandatory, and Jensen and Hansen (2001) propose internal curing with SAP.
Read the article · 3 minCarbonation: service life is not settled by fck alone
CO2 from the air lowers the pH of the cover until the steel is depassivated. Possan's 2010 model estimates the front and the service life from job-site variables, and NBR 6118 leaves the specification to the aggressiveness class.
Read the article · 3 minLC3: the bottleneck is characterizing the clay
What LC3-50 is, why reactivity depends on the kaolinite content of the clay, and what to measure before treating the 50/30/15/5 recipe as the cement of the job.
Read the article · 7 minC-S-H nucleation seeding: accelerating low-clinker cement past the first day
Why low-clinker cement gains strength slowly, how a C-S-H seed changes nucleation, what slag does to later strength, and why the number of nuclei matters more than the mass added.
Read the article · 6 minAlkali-silica reaction: why silica-rich SCMs hold the alkalis
What ASR is, how silica fume, metakaolin, fly ash and slag mitigate it through a low Ca/Si C-S-H, why there is no universal replacement level, and how NBR 15577 requires the mitigation to be proved with the cement and the SCM of the job.
Read the article · 5 minExampleClay in the sand and PCE admixture: why the slump disappears
Sand carrying clay, especially smectite, binds polycarboxylate superplasticizer. Slump vanishes, and making it up with water is a different concrete.
Read the article · 4 minExampleDelayed ettringite formation: the heat that becomes a crack years later
Why a temperature peak in mass concrete can plant ettringite that only expands once the concrete is hard — and what mix design and thermal control have to do with it.
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