This paper aims to study the characteristics of ternary blended system, namely granulated blast-furnace slag (WCS), from iron steel company and Homra (GCB) from Misr Brick (Helwan, Egypt) and silica fume (SF) at 30 mass% pozzolanas and 70 mass% OPC. The required water of standard consistency and setting times were measured as well as physico-chemical and mechanical characteristics of the hardened cement pastes were investigated. Some selected cement pastes were tested by TGA, DTA and FT-IR techniques to investigate the variation of hydrated products of blended cements. The pozzolanic activity of SF is higher than GCB and WCS. The higher activity of SF is mainly due to its higher surface area than the other two pozzolanic materials. On the other side, GCB is more pozzolanic than WCS due to GCB containing crystalline silica quartz in addition to an amorphous phase. The silica quartz acts as nucleating agents which accelerate the rate of hydration in addition to its amorphous phase, which can react with liberating Ca(OH)2 forming additional hydration products. |
