Supplementary cementitious materials (SCM) can reduce the total amount of Portland cement clinker in concrete production. Rice husk ashes (RHA) can be converted from an agricultural by-product to a high-performance concrete constituent due to a high amount of reactive silica with pozzolanic properties if they are burnt under controlled conditions. The way and duration of combustion, the cooling process as well as the temperature have an effect on the silica form and thus, the chemical and physical performance of the RHA. Various studies on the best combustion technique have been published to investigate the ideal combustion techniques. Yet, the process mostly took place under laboratory conditions. Investigating the difference between the performance of RHA produced in a rural environment and laboratory conditions is useful for the assessment and future enhancement of RHA production, and its application both as building material, for example in rural areas where it is sourced in large quantities, and as additive for high performance concrete. Thus, the paper presents a comparison between RHA produced under rudimentary conditions in a self-made furnace in the rural Bagamoyo, Tanzania and under controlled laboratory conditions at the Technical University of Munich, Germany, with different combustion methods and temperatures. In a second step, RHA was ground to reach particle size distributions comparable to cement. In a third step, cement pastes were prepared with 10%, 20% and 40% of cement replacement, and compared to the performance of plain and fly ash blended cement pastes. The results show that controlled burning conditions around 650 °C lead to high reactivity of silica and, therefore, to good performance as SCM. However, also the RHA burnt under less controlled conditions in the field provided reasonably good properties, if the process took place with proper burning parameters and adequate grinding. The knowledge can be implemented in the field to improve the final RHA performance as SCM in concrete.

Two static yield stress models, one known as YODEL and the newly proposed BreakPro, based on inter-particle bond breaking probability, were employed to comparatively simulate the yield stress of cement suspensions, induced by oscillatory rheological tests with small amplitude oscillatory shear (SAOS). This yield stress occurs at a critical strain in the order of 0.01%, and is commonly attributed to the limit of the linear viscoelastic domain, where attractive forces bridge the cement particles and form a flocculated particle network. YODEL is based on van der Waals (vdW) interaction forces to describe the yield stress for flow onset at a critical strain of a few percent, developed for simple non-reactive particulate suspensions. However, due to the high pH and reactivity of cementitious suspensions, their particle interaction forces are much higher than vdW. Therefore, until now, the YODEL adaptations to cementitious suspensions did not explicitly consider the microstructural-based salient feature of the original model, but used it as an implicit fitting parameter to scale the average attractive force. In this paper, the force is inversely estimated using the full power of the two microstructural-based models, presenting a new mathematical tool for investigating the fragility of the rigid percolated structure of cement suspensions. The model parameters were calibrated on measured yield stresses obtained by SAOS measurements in a high-sensitivity rheometer. The estimated forces were found to be 5.57 (BreakPro) and 1.43 (YODEL) times higher than typical van der Waals forces. The YODEL percolation threshold of 21% turned out to be significantly lower than the one found by the BreakPro model (37%). This indicated that BreakPro modeling assumptions are better suited for the description of yield stress at SAOS critical strain than the YODEL model.

Cementitious pastes are multiphase suspensions that are rheologically characterized by viscosity and yield stress. They tend to flocculate during rest due to attractive interparticle forces, and desagglomerate when shear is induced. The shear history, e.g., mixing energy and time, determines the apparent state of flocculation and accordingly the particle size distribution of the cement in the suspension, which itself affects suspension’s plastic viscosity and yield stress. Thus, it is crucial to understand the effect of the mixing procedure of cementitious suspensions before starting rheological measurements. However, the measurement of the in-situ particle agglomeration status is difficult, due to rapidly changing particle network structuration. The focused beam reflectance measurement (FBRM) technique offers an opportunity for the in-situ investigation of the chord length distribution. This enables to detect the state of flocculation of the particles during shear. Cementitious pastes differing in their solid fraction and superplasticizer content were analyzed after various pre-shear histories, i.e., mixing times. Yield stress and viscosity were measured in a parallel-plate-rheometer and related to in-situ measurements of the chord length distribution with the FBRM-probe to characterize the agglomeration status. With increasing mixing time agglomerates were increasingly broken up in dependence of pre-shear: After 300 s of pre-shear the agglomerate sizes decreased by 10 µm to 15 µm compared to a 30 s pre-shear. At the same time dynamic yield stress and viscosity decreased up to 30% until a state of equilibrium was almost reached. The investigations show a correlation between mean chord length and the corresponding rheological parameters affected by the duration of pre-shear.

Rheological modeling of special concretes such as ultra-high performance concretes (UHPCs), self-compacting concretes (SCCs), or environmentally friendly concretes with low clinker contents but containing many fine particles increases model complexity because high amounts of colloidal and fine particles and complex chemistry result in strongly non-Newtonian rheological behavior. Straight-forward viscoplastic rheological models such as the well-known Bingham- or Herschel-Bulkley approach do not fit the flow behavior on a large scale at and lead to boundary value problems in numerical flow simulations. Increased viscoelastic properties due to chemical admixtures are not described by pure viscoplasticity analysis methods. To fill this gap, our research presents viscoplastic and viscoelastic linear and non-linear rheological characterization methods for common and strongly non-Newtonian cement pastes and combines the methods for a comprehensive viscoelastoplastic modeling of cementitious building materials. We illustrate and discuss the benefits and boundaries of each measurement technique in dependence of cementitious paste complexity. Three solid volume fractions from $$\phi$$ϕ = 0.45 to 0.55 and three different flowability ranges, adjusted through varying superplasticizer amounts, were investigated in respect of steady-state and transient yield stress, viscosity, and non-linear viscoelastic material properties. Our results reveal that with increasing solid volume fraction and polymer amount, viscoelastoplastic modeling describes rheological flow on a large flow scale more appropriately than common viscoplastic methods. The results show a new approach for a full quantitative and qualitative rheological classification of cementitious building materials and thus improve the understanding of densely packed colloidal cementitious suspensions. The findings serve as prospective guideline to model complex cementitious building materials both at low and high shear rates, and to find an appropriate rheological description at the boundaries of flow. Graphical abstract

Rheological properties of cementitious pastes and mortar affect the casting, placement, and setting properties of fresh concrete. Fundamental rheological knowledge thus helps in predicting concrete flowability and workability. Empirical equations correlate actual rheological parameters based on physical material characteristics to workability tests. Still, these equations generally only take the dynamic yield stress of the material into account. This is not sufficient for thixotropic cementitious pastes or mortars, which possess structural buildup at rest. Workability predictions regarding the flow of concrete are thus more complicated with thixotropic materials. During form-filling in L-shaped formworks, the flow velocity of concrete slows down, wherefore rheological parameters change with time. At initial fast flow, high shear rates without structural buildup can be assumed. Dynamic yield stress and a steady state viscosity thus are proper parameters for empirical equations describing concrete flowability. During low shear rates, partial structural buildup takes place. Viscosity and yield stress increase due to agglomeration and affect the flowability of concrete tremendously. Rheological parameters of various cementitious pastes and mortars varying in their solid volume fraction and flowability were investigated in a vane-in-cup rheometer. The workability of the same mixtures was investigated by measuring the flow length in an L-shaped formwork. The effect of yield stress, viscosity, and thixotropic structural buildup on flow length was investigated. Subsequently correlations and discrepancies between flowability parameters and workability equations were analyzed.