M. Gonzalez Rodriguez

Influence of the mineralogical composition, specific surface area and strains — Crystallite size of alite on the compressive mechanical strength of portland mortars. II. Clinkers of high tricalcium aluminate contents

Various statistical methods have been used to investigate the influence of the clinker features (mineralogical composition, specific surface area and, especially, strains and crystallite size of alite) on the 1, 3, 7 and 28-day compressive mechanical strength of a series of Portland cement mortars of low C3A contents. As a result we have developed a new mathematical model based on the linear weights of the considered variables that might be of help to understanding the complex hydrolysis of minerals in Portland cement. For this purpose we have chosen a large set of clinkers obtained at kiln no. 3 of the Cementos del Atlantico S.A. factory (Alcala de Guadaira, Seville, Spain), where alite, belite and tricalcium aluminate occur essentially in their rombohedral, beta and cubic form, respectively, while the ferrite phase occurs in its rhombic form. The clinkers were prepared from two types of marls that were drawn from Alcala de Guadaira (Seville) and Moron de la Frontera (Seville). We performed hourly samplings in order to obtain a daily average clinker.