Categories
Other

What is density? how to distinguish different density definitions?

As material researchers, we know density is the physical property of materials. Even since grade school, we are taught that density is simply the mass of an object divided by its volume. However, this is pretty complicated in the case of cementitious materials. The mass of a certain amount of harden cement (or concrete) paste […]

Categories
Other

Sample Preparation for Quantitative X-Ray Diffraction (XRD/Rietveld)

Theoretical background: see chapters 3 and 4 in Lieven Machiels’s PhD thesis (2010). Sample preparation method modified from Machiels et al. (2008). Representative sampling The mineralogy and glass content of slags depend largely on the mode of cooling of the slags, e.g. slow cooling in a slag pot can result in a large amount of […]

Categories
Other

3D printer to print a house, is it the future of cementitious materials?

Construction industry, the only industry still does things manually. Even in the 21st century, to build a house right now is still a slow, labour-intensive, dangerous process, and almost always over-budget. Unlike the motoring or technology industries which use automated production methods to complete routine construction tasks, housing construction is one of the only industry […]