Академический Документы
Профессиональный Документы
Культура Документы
Note
a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t
Article history: Previous studies have shown a high potential of using geopolymers as new inorganic coatings in protecting
Received 19 May 2011 marine concrete. This article reports the results of the experiment on field application. Geopolymer coatings
Received in revised form 27 April 2012 were in-situ applied on the surfaces of concrete accropodes along the coast. It was observed that the geo-
Accepted 26 May 2012
polymer coatings set within 4 hours, bound strongly with concrete and were able to resist the wave shock
Available online 30 August 2012
in the first tide rise. There was a modicum of calcite detected by X-ray diffraction (XRD) but no sulphate
Keywords:
was found in the coatings within 6 months. One issue raised during in-situ application is the large shrinkage
Marine concrete of the geopolymer paste under ambient condition. Micro-cracks on the surfaces were observed after 7 days
Geopolymer although the MgO-based expansion agent and polypropylene (PP) fibers were added to withstand the shrink-
Coating age. The humidity of the atmosphere and the thickness of the coating layer are the two significant factors af-
Field experiment fecting the integrity of coatings. It was noted that the coating with a thickness of 5 mm at the tidal area,
Integrity where contact with seawater periodically, exhibited the best integrity. To solve the problem of large shrink-
age, it is recommended to use suitable aggregates in coating paste and to develop appropriate shrinkage re-
ducing agents together with careful curing procedures.
© 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
0169-1317/$ – see front matter © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.clay.2012.05.008
58 Z. Zhang et al. / Applied Clay Science 67–68 (2012) 57–60
2. Experimental programs
The coatings were daily observed during the first month to record Metakaolin Slag Activator PP fiber MgO
the change in appearance. To examine the possible phase change in
mass% 42.97 7.52 47.17 0.39 0.95
the hardened coatings due to the contact with seawater, XRD was
Z. Zhang et al. / Applied Clay Science 67–68 (2012) 57–60 59
carried out. The sampling and testing procedures for XRD were de- PP fibres
scribed elsewhere (Zhang et al., 2010b).
Fig. 2 shows the appearance of geopolymer coatings on SI, SII and SIII
at different ages. The coatings bound with concrete substrates very well Geopolymer Concrete
(Fig. 3a), although they have been exposed 6 h of wave shocking on SII coating substrate
and SIII in the first 12 h. The color change with time at early age and the
different shrinkage properties were two notable phenomena. After
being solidified for 24 h, the color of the coatings changed from soil-
red to azury, a typical color that usually appears in the product of alkali
activated slag at early age, and then gradually turned back to the origi-
nal soil-red after being exposed in the marine condition for 7 d. There
was no notable color change afterwards. The most concerned property
is the integrity of the coatings under natural marine environment. It Fig. 3. Geopolymer coating forcedly broken off with cement substrate bound together.
was observed that the coating on SI (Fig. 3b) exhibited the highest The cracked chips are linked by PP fibres.
shrinkage, and a few of micro-cracks appeared on the edges after
24 h. This is because of the fast loss of water under the windy condition maybe due to the quantity is below the testing limitation of XRD.
(Lin and Ran, 2010) and may also partially be due to the chemical From literatures, the magnesium and sulphate ions have been ob-
shrinkage of geopolymer binder (Zhang et al., 2010a, 2010b). Although served in the fly-ash based geopolymer matrix when the specimens
the coating on SII (Fig. 3c) immersed in seawater for 12 h in the first immersed in seawater, although theses ions seem to have no signifi-
24 h, it still had shrinkage, which lead to the micro-cracks (the white cant influence on the mechanical strength (Fernández-Jiménez and
line indicated in Fig. 3c (left)). The coating on SIII had the best integrity Palomo, 2009). It is reported that the alkali activated slag/metakaolin
and no micro-crack was found in the first 24 h. However, after 7 d, a few blends possess faster carbonation when more metakaolin is used
micro-cracks appeared on the coating but the size and concentration (Bernal et al., 2010). In this study, however, it should be noted that
were much smaller than those which appeared on SI and SII. the slag used in this system is 12 wt.% of the total solid content,
Fig. 3 shows a piece of 28 d-aged coating chip, which was forcedly much less than those alkali activated slag or slag/metakaolin systems,
broken off from SIII. The coating chips being pounded down always where the slag content is more than 80 wt.% (Bernal et al., 2010). In
ripped off some concrete substrate, indicating that the bonding inter- return very limited amount of calcite silicate hydrates (C–S–H) was
face was stronger than the substrate. Fig. 4 presents the XRD patterns formed. Therefore, the extremely slow ingression of ions and carbon-
of the 28 and 180 d-aged coatings on SIII. Calcite was detectable in ation are attributed to the compact structure of the coating and the
both 28 d and 180 d products. However, sulphate was not found, less C–S–H, which is one possible ingredient that may process
a b
24 h 180 d 24 h 180 d
10 mm
c d
24 h 180 d 24 h 180 d
10 mm 10 mm
Fig. 2. Geopolymer coatings solidified for 24 h and aged 180 d: a whole view on accropods (a); cracks to micro-cracks appeared on coating surfaces on SI (b), SII (c) and SIII (d).
Arrows point to micro-cracks.
60 Z. Zhang et al. / Applied Clay Science 67–68 (2012) 57–60
α -Quartz to reduce the binder content in coating. It has been noted that a
higher sand/binder ratio results in low shrinkage (Vasconcelos et al.,
kaolinite 2011). Spraying suitable shrinkage reducing agents (moisturizers)
calcite on the surface of coating or using viscosity modifying agents to re-
duce water evaporation may also work (Lin and Ran, 2010). However,
those commercial agents are only reported workable for normal con-
crete. Very limited information about geopolymer additives has been
180 d
disclosed yet. Further investigations are needed in both the coating
composition design and the field application procedure.
4. Summary