Related papers: The physics of cement cohesion
CO$_2$ emissions originating from the construction industry have a significant impact on global warming where the production of ordinary Portland cement clinker is responsible for approximately 8\% of all human-made CO$_2$. Alkali doped…
The incorporation of nanosilica in cementitious systems helps in accelerating the cement hydration process and early-stage formation of the main hydration product, that is, calcium silicate hydrate. Nanosilica reacts with the other key…
Collisions of ice particles play an important role in the formation of planetesimals and comets. In recent work we showed, that CO$_2$ ice behaves like silicates in collisions. The resulting assumption was that it should therefore stick…
We study the transition of a granular packing from liquid to solid bonding in the course of drying. The particles are initially wetted by a liquid brine and the cohesion of the packing is ensured by capillary forces, but the crystallization…
Ionic liquids have generated interest in applications as lubricants and as additives to conventional lubricants due to their unique physical properties. In these applications, the liquid thin film can be subjected simultaneously to…
Analysis of the mechanical properties of key phases of cementitious systems during hydration at the nanoscale is vital for a better understanding of the type and formation of key cement hydration phases. In this work, nanoindentation…
Based on combination of experimental measurements and first-principles calculations we report a novel carbon-based catalytic material and describe significant acceleration of the hydrogenation of magnesium at room temperature in presence of…
Cement paste serves as the universal binder in concrete, formed by mixing water with Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC). In its fresh state, cement paste is a suspension in which the initial particle inventory continuously dissolves, while…
In order to design tougher materials, it is crucial to understand the relationship between their composition and their resistance to fracture. To this end, we investigate the fracture toughness of usual sodium silicate glasses (NS) and…
The hydrodynamic formulation of quantum mechanics is used to elucidate the mechanism for decoherence, the suppression of interference effects in a system evolving from an initial coherent superposition. Analysis of time-dependent trajectory…
Systems of Cooee bitumen and water up to 4 mass % are studied by molecular dynamics simula- tions. The cohesive energy density of the system is shown to decrease with an increasing water content. This decrease is due mainly to an increase…
The nature of Calcium--Silicate--Hydrate (C--S--H), the binding phase of cement, remains a controversial question. In particular, contrary to the former crystalline model, it was recently proposed that its nanoscale structure was actually…
Water and water-mediated interactions determine thermodynamic and kinetics of protein folding, protein aggregation and self-assembly in confined spaces. To obtain insights into the role of water in the context of folding problems, we…
Mixing describes the process by which solutes evolve from an initial heterogeneous state to uniformity under the stirring action of a fluid flow. Fluid stretching forms thin scalar lamellae which coalesce due to molecular diffusion. Owing…
Dielectric properties are intimately related to the content and composition of the liquid phase present in micro- and mesoporous materials. The presence of ions is recognized to affect the dielectric response of electrolytes in a complex…
Metal coordination is ubiquitous in Nature and central in many applications ranging from nanotechnology to catalysis and environmental chemistry. Complex formation results from the subtle interplay between different thermodynamic, kinetic,…
Water adsorption on silicate surfaces is a critical yet poorly understood process relevant to, e.g., mineral weathering and cement hydration. This study investigates the structure of water overlayers on a model calcium silicate, the…
The relationship between humidity and water content in a hydrating cement paste is largely controlled by the nanostructure of the C-S-H gel. Current hydration models do not describe this nanostructure, thus sorption isotherms and…
The confinement of an ionic liquid between charged solid surfaces is treated using an exactly solvable 1D Coulomb gas model. The theory highlights the importance of two dimensionless parameters: the fugacity of the ionic liquid, and the…
We reconsider a number of measurements for the overall hydration kinetics of tricalcium silicate pastes having an initial water to cement weight ratio close to 0.5. We find that the time dependent ratio of hydrated and unhydrated silica…