Monitoring of acoustic emission behaviour during early-age cement paste hydration

Abstract

Abstract Valuation of Portland cement hydration using non-destructive techniques at early age is of great interest for predicting its thermal and durability characteristics. The acoustic emission (AE) technique is verified to be a high-quality non-destructive tool for real-time monitoring of structural micro-changes during the lifetime of Cement-based material composites. In this study, AE was applied to study the relationship between recorded signal and mechanisms that were happened during cement paste hydration. By using AE sensors, Portland cement paste samples with w/c ratio of 0.33 and 0.4 were explored during the first 72 h of casting. The AE resulting signals in each stage of hydration were studied to describe the various mechanisms that were running throughout the hydration process.