Dense packing properties of mineral admixtures in cementitious material

Abstract The effect of ultra-fine fly ash (UFFA), steel slag (SS) and silica fume (SF) on packing density of binary, ternary and quaternary cementitious materials was studied in this paper in terms of minimum water requirement of cement. The influence of mineral admixtures on the relative density of pastes with low water/binder ratios was analyzed and the relationship between paste density and compressive strength of the corresponding hardened mortars was discussed. The results indicate that the incorporation of mineral admixtures can effectively improve the packing density of cementitious materials; the increase in packing density of a composite with incorporation of two or three kinds of mineral admixtures is even more obvious than that with only one mineral admixture. Moreover, an optimal amount of mineral admixture imparts to the mixture maximum packing density. The dense packing effect of a mineral admixture can increase the packing density of the resulting cementitious material and also the density of paste with low water/binder ratio, which evidently enhances the compressive strength of the hardened mortar.