Sriramya Nair Dissertation Final
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Copyright by Sriramya Duddukuri Nair 2013 The Dissertation Committee for Sriramya Duddukuri Nair Certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Adaptive Performance of Cement-based Materials Using a Magnetorheological Approach Committee: Raissa P. Ferron, Supervisor Maria C.G. Juenger David W. Fowler Chadi S. El Mohtar Eric van Oort Adaptive Performance of Cement-based Materials Using a Magnetorheological Approach by Sriramya Duddukuri Nair, B. Tech.; M. S. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin August 2013 Dedication To my parents and my husband, for their support and encouragement. Acknowledgements First of all I would like to thank my advisor, Prof. Raissa Ferron for giving me this opportunity to work on this project and for introducing me to the world of rheology. Thank you for your guidance, support and encouragement over the years. Without you, this dissertation would not have been possible and I am greatly indebted to you. I thank Prof. Maria Juenger for all her support and guidance. Thank you for spending time with me and guiding me through all my years at UT. I thank you as well for serving on my committee and for all your valuable inputs. I would like to thank Prof. Eric van Oort and Kenneth “Mike” Cowan for their support both technically and financially towards the last year of this work. Thank you for sharing our excitement about this project and for all your input to the project. I’m really excited about joining your lab and I’m looking forward to it. I thank Prof. David Fowler and Prof. Chadi El Mohtar for taking time off their busy schedules to serve on my committee and for their guidance. I thank Dr. Mohsen Ahmadian for helping me run the vibrating sample magnetometer and Zeynep Basaran for the scanning electron microscope images. The results were helpful for characterizing the materials. I also want to thank v Zeynep Basaran and Dongyeop Han for all the useful discussions we have had over the past few years. Working in the lab wouldn’t have been fun without the two of you. I express my gratitude to Sherian Williams and Tesse Smitherman for taking care of all the administrative nuances and for making it seem to seamless. I thank Mike Rung and Michelle Shuck for their technical support with everything at both the labs. Thank you for listening to all the problems and providing feasible solutions. A special shout out to Chris Clement for all his ideas and help with fixing things at the lab. I would like to take a moment to thank everyone at 18B who have helped me in different ways ranging from experiments to ideas to emotional support when needed and for making this an unforgettable experience. I express my sincere gratitude to all the undergraduate assistants who helped me with this project as well as other research projects that I have worked on at UT. A special recognition for Alex Martinez, Thomas Weng, Daniel Pelayo, Jessica Nguyen, Naomi Bhappu, Rukundo Gahigiro, Morgan Allford, Tania Vazquez and Kevin Nicoletta. I thank the Civil Engineering Dept. and all the professors involved with CE 314K for supporting me financially through a teaching assistantship for a major chunk vi of my stay at UT. Thanks to Wayne, Tyler, Phil, Amir, Craig, Jinwoo, Sarwar, Trevor, Wenyu, Zeynep and all the students for making it fun. This PhD wouldn’t have been possible without the support of my brother, my in- laws, my grandma’s, uncles, aunts, cousins and especially all my friends in and out of Austin. Growing up my father and his colleagues were my biggest inspiration and just like them I always wanted to be an engineer. My mother gets most of the credit for making my dreams come true. She had faith in my abilities and provided me with all the resources that I needed. I express my deepest gratitude to both my parents for their sacrifices and for being my strongest supporters throughout this long educational journey, which has lasted more than a couple of decades. I believe that I have made them proud today by finishing my doctoral degree. These acknowledgements wouldn’t be complete without the mention of my dearest husband, Hari. Being a fellow doctoral candidate he absolutely understood all the ups and downs of graduate school life and always knew the right thing to say to cheer me up during all the frustrating times when equipments or experiments wouldn’t work. Even though I’m done with my PhD now, I cannot promise Hari that I won’t show up at home all covered in cement because both Hari and cement (/concrete) are the two loves of my life. vii Adaptive Performance of Cement-based Materials Using a Magnetorheological Approach Sriramya Duddukuri Nair, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2013 Supervisor: Raissa P. Ferron Today’s concrete is no longer a simple combination of cement, aggregates and water. With increased use of various types of waste materials as supplementary cementitious materials and chemical admixtures, material incompatibility problems have been observed in concrete construction. As a result, some of the greatest problems in concrete manufacturing occur when concrete does not stiffen or harden on time. To this end, a new innovative type of cementing technique (based on the principles of magnetorheology) is presented that allows for the real- time control over the stiffening or setting behavior of concrete. In traditional magnetorheological (MR) fluids, magnetic particles are mostly submerged in Newtonian carrier fluids using high volumetric contents (40-50%) of magnetic particles. A key interest in this work was to investigate if using a non-Newtonian viii carrier fluid like cement paste with low dosages of magnetic particles would yield an MR effect. Rheological tests were conducted on paste mixtures containing small dosages of magnetic particles (less than 2% volume fraction) and when a magnetic field was applied, it was determined that the shear resistance of the paste could be altered significantly. The response of the paste was found to be dependent on the magnitude of the applied field, concentration of the magnetic particles and surface chemistry of magnetic particles. Furthermore the magnetic particles used in this research to create the MR cement paste did not have any effect on cement hydration products or on compressive strength results. It was shown that the rheological behavior of cement paste could even be adapted to simulate “setting” behavior when an MR-based approach is used. Thus, the potential to create a cement-based material whose fresh state behavior can be adapted on-demand by the user to achieve a desired behavior may soon be a reality. Such a material can be useful in applications in which controlling the fresh-state behavior is critical, and could transform the way cement-based materials are cast. In addition, possibilities to create a smart cement-based composite from the fresh to the hardened state may be possible if the magnetic particles could later be used for structural health monitoring. ix Table of Contents List of Key Symbols ............................................................................................ xiv List of Abbreviations ........................................................................................... xvi List of Tables ...................................................................................................... xvii List of Figures...................................................................................................... xix CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION.........................................................................1 CHAPTER 2: BACKGROUND...........................................................................5 2.1 Introduction To Rheology......................................................................5 2.2 Rheological Tests...................................................................................6 2.2.1 Flow Curves..................................................................................6 2.2.2 Stress Growth..............................................................................10 2.2.3 Small angle oscillatory shear (SAOS) ........................................13 2.2.4 Why study rheology of concrete? ...............................................16 2.2.5 Measurement devices for rheology.............................................17 2.3 Cement Hydration, Flocculation and Thixotropy ................................19 2.4 Basics Of Magnetism...........................................................................21 2.4.1 Magnetic field and magnetic units..............................................22 2.4.2 Diamagnetic materials ................................................................23 2.4.3 Ferromagnetic materials..............................................................24 2.4.4 Magnetization curves..................................................................25 2.4.7 Soft vs. hard ferromagnetic magnetic materials .........................28 2.4.8 Paramagnetic materials ...............................................................30 2.4.9 Influence of temperature on ferromagnetic materials.................31 2.5 Magnetorheology .................................................................................31 CHAPTER 3: MATERIALS AND SAMPLE PREPARATION.........................35 3.1 General Overview of Materials Employed in This Research ..............35