Relationship between differences in silica fume additives and fine-scale microstructural evolution in cement based materials

The effects on the microstructural development of adding silica fume to cements and concretes during cement hydration have been studied using small-angle neutron scattering and ultrasmall-angle X-ray scattering. A previously developed fractal based microstructural model has been applied to extract representative microstructural parameters from the small-angle scattering data. A link has been established between the existence of coarse or agglomerated particles in the silica fume particle size distribution and possible deleterious microstructural evolution during cement hydration.