Predicting One-Day, Three-Day, and Seven-Day Heat of Hydration of Portland Cement

Abstract

This paper aims to develop empirical equations predicting one-day, three-day, and seven-day heat of hydration of portland cement at 23°C and water to cement ratio of 0.5. Isothermal conduction calorimetry was implemented to measure the heat of hydration of portland cements for up to seven days. X-ray diffraction was used to study the mineralogy and also for quantification of phase composition of portland cements. Particle size distribution of cements was measured using a laser scattering particle size analyzer. Blaine fineness of cements was measured using a Blaine permeability apparatus in accordance with the standard test methods for the fineness of hydraulic cement by air-permeability apparatus procedure. The results indicate that the one-day, three-day, and seven-day heat of hydration of a specific portland cement ground to different finenesses is changing linearly with the cement mean particle size. This research shows that the mean particle size is a suitable measure of cement fineness to correlate with major phases of portland cement (C3S, C3A, C2S, C4AF) in developing equations predicting the heat of hydration of cements at one, three, and seven days.