Effect of mineral additives and permeability reducing admixtures having different action mechanisms on mechanical and durability performance of cementitious systems

Abstract

In this paper, the effect of usage of the permeability reducing admixture (PRA) having different action mechanisms on hardened state properties of cementitious systems containing mineral additives is examined. For this aim, three commercial PRAs were used during investigation. The effective parameters in the first and third PRAs were air-entraining and high-rate air-entraining, respectively. The second one contained the insoluble calcium carbonate residue and had a small amount of the air-entraining property. Mortar mixes with binary and ternary cementitious systems were prepared by partially replacing cement with fly ash and metakaolin. The hardened state properties of mortar mixtures such as compressive strength, ultrasonic pulse velocity, water absorption, drying shrinkage and freeze-thaw resistance were investigated. The ternary cement-based mixture having both fly ash and metakaolin was selected as the most successful mineral-additive bearing mix in regard to hardened state properties. In this sense, PRA-B, with both insoluble residues and a small amount of air-entraining properties, showed the best performance among the mixtures containing PRA. The combined use of mineral additive and PRA had a more positive effect on the properties of the mixes.