Relationship between differences in silica fume additives and fine-scale microstructural evolution in cement based materials

The effects on the microstructural development of adding silica fume to cements and concretes during cement hydration have been studied using small-angle neutron scattering and ultrasmall-angle X-ray scattering. A previously developed fractal based microstructural model has been applied to extract representative microstructural parameters from the small-angle scattering data. A link has been established between the existence of coarse or agglomerated particles in the silica fume particle size distribution and possible deleterious microstructural evolution during cement hydration. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.