Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2022 Oct 11;15(20):7044.
doi: 10.3390/ma15207044.

Prediction of the Rheological Properties of Fresh Cementitious Suspensions Considering Microstructural Parameters

Sam Rajadurai Rajagopalan  1 , Bang-Yeon Lee  2 , Su-Tae Kang  1
Affiliations

Prediction of the Rheological Properties of Fresh Cementitious Suspensions Considering Microstructural Parameters

Sam Rajadurai Rajagopalan et al. Materials (Basel). .

Abstract

Supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs) are commonly used to partially replace cements. Although it is necessary to investigate the rheological properties of the individual supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs) for understanding complex rheological behaviors of the blended mixes, the study on the investigation of rheological properties of various SCMs such as fly ash, blast-furnace slag, and silica fume, according to various solid volume fractions and prediction models is fairly limited. This study investigated the rheological properties of non-blended cementitious suspensions with Portland cement (PC), fly ash (FA), blast-furnace slag (BS), and silica fume (SF) materials in the experiments and predicted using YODEL (Yield stress mODEL) and Krieger-Dougherty's (K-D's) equation. Experiments were designed with various solid volume fractions (ϕ) from 0.28 to 0.44, and the rheological properties of all cementitious suspensions were noted to increase with increasing ϕ, showing an improved flowability at low ϕ. YODEL, derived from the first principles considering particle-size distributions, interparticle forces and microstructural parameters predicted the yield stress. The YODEL predictions were consistent with the experiments with a positive correlation coefficient of above 0.96. K-D's equation with the maximum particle fractions and intrinsic viscosity as key parameters predicted the plastic viscosity. The K-D's equation predictions match up with the experiments with a positive correlation coefficient of above 0.94. Both models showed more quantitative predictions without any fitting parameters and could be applied to any multimodal powder suspensions.

Keywords: Krieger-Dougherty’s equation; YODEL; plastic viscosity; rheology; yield stress.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
SEM micrographs of cementitious materials: (a) PC; (b) FA; (c) BS; (d) SF.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Particle-size distributions (PSDs) of cementitious materials.
Figure 3
Figure 3
(a) Spindle type; (b) Experimental set-up; (c) Shear rate protocol applied for experiments.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Yield stress of cementitious suspensions with different ϕ in the experiments.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Log-normal distributions of the cementitious materials: (a) PC; (b) FA; (c) BS; (d) SF.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Yield stress of cementitious suspensions in YODEL predictions and experiments: (a) PC; (b) FA; (c) BS; (d) SF.
Figure 7
Figure 7
Plastic viscosity of cementitious suspensions with different ϕ in the experiments.
Figure 8
Figure 8
Plastic viscosity of cementitious suspensions in K–D predictions and experiments: (a) PC; (b) FA; (c) BS; (d) SF.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Flatt R.J., Bowen P. Yodel: A yield stress model for suspensions. J. Am. Ceram. Soc. 2006;89:1244–1256. doi: 10.1111/j.1551-2916.2005.00888.x. - DOI
    1. Flatt R.J., Bowen P. Yield stress of multimodal powder suspensions: An extension of the YODEL (Yield Stress mODEL) J. Am. Ceram. Soc. 2007;90:1038–1044. doi: 10.1111/j.1551-2916.2007.01595.x. - DOI
    1. Flatt R.J. Towards a prediction of superplasticized concrete rheology. Mater. Struct. 2004;37:289–300. doi: 10.1007/BF02481674. - DOI
    1. Roussel N., Lemaître A., Flatt R.J., Coussot P. Steady state flow of cement suspensions: A micromechanical state of the art. Cem. Concr. Res. 2010;40:77–84. doi: 10.1016/j.cemconres.2009.08.026. - DOI
    1. Roussel N., Bessaies-Bey H., Kawashima S., Marchon D., Vasilic K., Wolfs R. Recent advances on yield stress and elasticity of fresh cement-based materials. Cem. Concr. Res. 2019;124:105798. doi: 10.1016/j.cemconres.2019.105798. - DOI