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Development of High-Durability, Sustainable, and Carbon-Neutral Concrete Composites
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Development of High-Durability, Sustainable, and Carbon-Neutral Concrete Composites

A special issue of Materials (ISSN 1996-1944). This special issue belongs to the section "Construction and Building Materials".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (10 April 2024) | Viewed by 3854

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Rajeev Roychand

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Civil and Infrastructure Engineering, RMIT University, Melbourne, VIC 3000, Australia
Interests: carbon sequestration; carbon curing; carbon mineralization; supplementary cementitious materials; low carbon concrete; zero cement composites; material characterization; concrete microstructure
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Climate change brought about by greenhouse gas emissions is a significant challenge facing our planet. The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has warned that changes in the Earth's climate are rapid and intensifying and are likely to be irreversible. There is an urgent need to contain warming at 1.5 ˚C which requires a 45% reduction in the global net carbon dioxide emissions by 2030 and targeting "net-zero" by 2050. This brings the cement and concrete industry back into the spotlight, as it is responsible for 7–8% of global CO2 emissions. Moreover, the continuous mining of valuable natural resources by the cement and concrete industry to meet the ever-increasing global demand for infrastructure development makes it a long-term sustainability challenge. Therefore, the research and development on cutting down its carbon footprint and transforming it into a carbon-neutral and sustainable material have been getting extensive and sustained focus. The conservation of natural resources and recycling of waste materials has become an active component of this transformation process that parallelly supports the global interest in the closed-loop circular economy. Various advancements have been made in developing eco-friendly cement concrete that is getting more sustainable and proactively supporting the circular economy.

This Special Issue focuses on novel and fundamental research that paves the way towards developing carbon-neutral and sustainable cement concrete that also encourages recycling various waste streams.

The potential topics of interest for this Special Issue include, but are not limited to:

  • Development of zero cement composites;
  • Lime and calcined clay cement composites;
  • Use of machine learning and AI in the development of low-carbon cement composites;
  • Carbon dioxide curing and mineralization in cement concrete;
  • Carbon sequestration from various waste streams in cement concrete;
  • Recycling of various waste materials for the replacement of cement and/or aggregates;
  • Physicochemical and microstructure studies of the blended cement/concrete composites;
  • Long-term mechanical and durability studies.

Dr. Rajeev Roychand
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Materials is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • carbon dioxide curing
  • carbon dioxide mineralization
  • carbon sequestration
  • supplementary
  • cementitious materials
  • zero cement composites
  • biochar
  • sustainability
  • waste recycling

Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

21 pages, 36724 KiB  
Article
Evaluation of Compressive and Bending Strength of a Geopolymer Based on Lateritic Clays as an Alternative Hydraulic Binder
by Walter A. Abujder Ochoa, Moisés A. Sánchez Málaga, Arturo Brañez Tapia, Oriana Palma Calabokis, Yamid E. Nuñez de la Rosa, Gunther E. Viscarra Chirinos and Sebastián N. Pinto Lavayén
Materials 2024, 17(2), 307; https://doi.org/10.3390/ma17020307 - 08 Jan 2024
Viewed by 935
Abstract
In Bolivia, lateritic soils are common in humid tropical regions and can be used in the construction industry as an alternative to materials that cause a negative environmental impact, such as cement. The production of Portland cement causes environmental issues like significant greenhouse [...] Read more.
In Bolivia, lateritic soils are common in humid tropical regions and can be used in the construction industry as an alternative to materials that cause a negative environmental impact, such as cement. The production of Portland cement causes environmental issues like significant greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution. To address this problem, geopolymers have been introduced as an alternative binder with low CO2 emissions. In this regard, geopolymers based on lateritic clays have been studied mineralogically, chemically, and on their compressive strength separately. However, there are still no studies on lateritic clays present in Bolivia and their mechanical, mineralogical, and chemical properties combined in a geopolymer. Therefore, this present research proposes the evaluation of a geopolymer made from laterite clays. Compression and flexural tests were carried out, along with mineralogical and chemical analyses on mortar and geopolymer cubes and prisms. The results indicate that the laterite clay-based geopolymer has lower compressive strength compared to Portland cement IP (cement type I with the addition of pozzolana) mortar. However, the flexural strength tests show a slight increase in the case of the geopolymer. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Development of High-Durability, Sustainable, and Carbon-Neutral Concrete Composites)
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14 pages, 5129 KiB  
Article
Estimating Compressive Strength of Concrete Using Neural Electromagnetic Field Optimization
by Mohammad Reza Akbarzadeh, Hossein Ghafourian, Arsalan Anvari, Ramin Pourhanasa and Moncef L. Nehdi
Materials 2023, 16(11), 4200; https://doi.org/10.3390/ma16114200 - 05 Jun 2023
Cited by 23 | Viewed by 1225
Abstract
Concrete compressive strength (CCS) is among the most important mechanical characteristics of this widely used material. This study develops a novel integrative method for efficient prediction of CCS. The suggested method is an artificial neural network (ANN) favorably tuned by electromagnetic field optimization [...] Read more.
Concrete compressive strength (CCS) is among the most important mechanical characteristics of this widely used material. This study develops a novel integrative method for efficient prediction of CCS. The suggested method is an artificial neural network (ANN) favorably tuned by electromagnetic field optimization (EFO). The EFO simulates a physics-based strategy, which in this work is employed to find the best contribution of the concrete parameters (i.e., cement (C), blast furnace slag (SBF), fly ash (FA1), water (W), superplasticizer (SP), coarse aggregate (AC), fine aggregate (FA2), and the age of testing (AT)) to the CCS. The same effort is carried out by three benchmark optimizers, namely the water cycle algorithm (WCA), sine cosine algorithm (SCA), and cuttlefish optimization algorithm (CFOA) to be compared with the EFO. The results show that hybridizing the ANN using the mentioned algorithms led to reliable approaches for predicting the CCS. However, comparative analysis indicates that there are appreciable distinctions between the prediction capacity of the ANNs created by the EFO and WCA vs. the SCA and CFOA. For example, the mean absolute error calculated for the testing phase of the ANN-WCA, ANN-SCA, ANN-CFOA, and ANN-EFO was 5.8363, 7.8248, 7.6538, and 5.6236, respectively. Moreover, the EFO was considerably faster than the other strategies. In short, the ANN-EFO is a highly efficient hybrid model, and can be recommended for the early prediction of the CCS. A user-friendly explainable and explicit predictive formula is also derived for the convenient estimation of the CCS. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Development of High-Durability, Sustainable, and Carbon-Neutral Concrete Composites)
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16 pages, 3836 KiB  
Article
Performance of Reinforced Foam and Geopolymer Concretes against Prolonged Exposures to Chloride in a Normal Environment
by Muhammad Wasim, Rajeev Roychand, Rhys Thomas Barnes, Jason Talevski, David Law, Jie Li and Mohammad Saberian
Materials 2023, 16(1), 149; https://doi.org/10.3390/ma16010149 - 23 Dec 2022
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1085
Abstract
The utilization of sustainable cement replacement materials in concrete can control the emission of carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases in the construction industry, thus contributing significantly to the environment, society, and the global economy. Various types of sustainable concrete including geopolymer concrete are [...] Read more.
The utilization of sustainable cement replacement materials in concrete can control the emission of carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases in the construction industry, thus contributing significantly to the environment, society, and the global economy. Various types of sustainable concrete including geopolymer concrete are tested for their efficacy for construction in laboratories. However, the performance and longevity of sustainable concrete for civil engineering applications in corrosive environments are still debatable. This paper aims to investigate the performance of the reinforced geopolymer (GPC) and foam concretes (FC) against corrosive chloride exposure. Two long term key parameters, i.e., corrosion rate and mechanical performance of reinforcing steel in geopolymer and foam concrete were assessed to evaluate their performance against chloride attack. For experiments, reinforced GPC and FC specimens, each admixed with 3 and 5% chlorides, were kept at varying temperatures and humidity levels in the environmental chambers. The corrosion rates of the reinforced geopolymer and foam concrete specimens were also compared with control specimens after 803 days and the tensile strength of the corroded reinforcing steel was also determined. Moreover, the long term efficacy of repaired patches (810 days), in a chloride-rich surrounding environment utilizing FC and GPC, was investigated. The results suggested greater performance of FC compared to GPC under standard environmental conditions. However, the simulated patch repair with GPC showed better resistance against chloride attack compared to FC. The research also undertook the fractographical examination of the surfaces of the reinforcement exposed to 5% admixed chloride and develops models for the corrosion rates of foam concrete as a function of the corrosion rates of geopolymer concrete and chloride content. A correlation model for the corrosion rates of FC and GPC was also developed. The findings of the current research and the model developed are novel and contribute to the knowledge of long term degradation science of geopolymers and form concrete materials. Furthermore, the findings and methodology of the current research have practical significance in the construction and repair industry for determining the remaining service life for any reinforced and steel infrastructure. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Development of High-Durability, Sustainable, and Carbon-Neutral Concrete Composites)
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