Cement and Concrete Research 125 (2019) 105858

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Cement and Concrete Research

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/cemconres

Conceptual design and performance evaluation of two-stage ultra-low T

binder ultra-high performance concrete
⁎ ⁎⁎
P.P. Lia,b, Q.L. Yub,c, , H.J.H. Brouwersa,b, W. Chena,
a
State Key Laboratory of Silicate Materials for Architectures, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan 430070, PR China
b
Department of the Built Environment, Eindhoven University of Technology, P.O. Box 513, 5600 MB Eindhoven, the Netherlands
c
School of Civil Engineering, Wuhan University, 430072 Wuhan, PR China

A R T I C LE I N FO A B S T R A C T

Keywords: This study proposes a novel concept of two-stage ultra-high performance concrete (TS-UHPC), towards ultra-low
Two stage ultra-high performance concrete binder consumption. The effects of grout and coarse aggregate are investigated and their compatibility is
Compatibility evaluated. Results show that TS-UHPC has a low binder amount (down to 364 kg/m3) and high binder efficiency
ITZ (up to 0.417 MPa·m3/kg), possessing excellent compressive strength of up to 151.8 MPa at 91 days.
Binder efficiency
Microstructural analysis reveals that grout with a sand-to-powder ratio of 1.0 shows a higher hydration degree,
Prediction model
denser structure, and increased later strength. Coarser basalt aggregate tends to slightly lower compressive and
splitting tensile strength, 14% and 12% reduction with the maximum size from 8 mm to 25 mm, respectively.
The TS-UHPC has an excellent interfacial transition zone that induces a water-permeable porosity of
0.91%–1.32%. New formulas are proposed to describe correlation between compressive and splitting tensile
strength of TS-UHPC, and to predict strength of TS-UHPC by grout.

1. Introduction powder amount of UHPC [12], and improved low-velocity impact re-
sistance [13]. Pyo et al. [14,15] produced UHPC incorporating coarser
Ultra-high performance concrete (UHPC) is an advanced building aggregates with maximum particle size of 5.2 mm, and revealed ex-
material with wide application potentials, attributed to its superior cellent abrasion resistance, strain hardening behaviour and a limited
workability, mechanical property, impact resistance and durability decrease in tensile strength. Liu et al. [16] designed UHPC combined
[1–4]. One of the key mix design principles is to eliminate coarse ag- with coarse aggregates (5–20 mm) and fibres, and found that coarse
gregate and utilize large amount binder to increase homogeneity of aggregates could be successfully introduced into the system of UHPC
UHPC and overcome inherent weakness of interfacial transition zone without impairing tensile properties at a favourable replacement level
(ITZ) [5–7], usually more than 900 kg/m3 binders are consumed [8]. It (25% by the volume of UHPC matrix). Wu et al. [17,18] investigated
causes some disadvantages, such as poor economic benefit and sus- the projectile impact resistance of basalt or corundum aggregated
tainability issue, large autogenous shrinkage, and thermal induced UHPC, proved that enlarging the size of the coarse aggregates could
cracks in mass concrete. help to reduce the penetration depth, impact crater area and volume.
Introducing appropriate coarse aggregates into UHPC is a promising However, those attempts only use limited volume replacement levels
attempt to solve the above mentioned problems. The utilization of (e.g. 25% by the volume of UHPC matrix in Ref. [17]) and maximum
coarse aggregates in conventional concrete has apparent advantages, particle sizes (e.g. 5.2 mm in Ref. [15]) of coarse aggregates, and the
such as reduced autogenous shrinkage [2], improved elastic modulus powder contents are still quite large (e.g. 770–1100 kg/m3 in Ref.
and workability [9], enhanced stress-strain behaviour of confined [18]). Besides, coarse aggregates with low density and strength are not
concrete [10], strengthened impact resistance under high velocity compatible with the relatively high strength of UHPC matrix. While
projectile [11]. In recent years, researchers have attempted to in- high strength coarse aggregates usually have dense structure and high
corporate coarse aggregates into UHPC and acquired good results. Our density, which more easily causes segregation problem in UHPC system.
previous research showed that coarse basalt aggregates have negligible Hence, how to further increase the volume and size of coarse aggregate
negative effect on the mechanical strength, with a significantly reduced and reduce the binder consumption in UHPC system is still an issue and

⁎
Correspondence to: Q.L. Yu, Department of the Built Environment, Eindhoven University of Technology, P.O. Box 513, 5600 MB Eindhoven, the Netherlands.
⁎⁎
Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: [email protected] (Q.L. Yu), [email protected] (W. Chen).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cemconres.2019.105858
Received 6 February 2019; Received in revised form 5 August 2019; Accepted 6 August 2019
0008-8846/ © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
P.P. Li, et al. Cement and Concrete Research 125 (2019) 105858

potential research subject.

Two-stage (preplaced aggregate) concrete (TSC) is an effective way
to extend the utilization of coarse aggregates, which is produced by first
preplacing aggregates in a formwork and subsequently injecting grout
[19,20]. High volumes of large size aggregates can be easily used, due
to its fabrication methodology without any segregation concerns [20].
A higher volume (e.g. 53%–59% in Ref. [19, 21]) means a much lower
binder consumption. A larger maximum particle size of the aggregates
(e.g. 40 mm in Ref. [22]) indicates a better resistance against bullet or
projectile impact [18]. TSC has already been successfully used in ap-
plications including underwater concrete construction, massive con-
crete structure, casting concrete in areas with narrowly spaced re-
inforcement, concrete repair, heavyweight concrete and low-shrinkage
concrete. Nevertheless, the strength of current TSC is relatively low,
usually ranging between 10 MPa to 60 MPa [19–25], which is probably
attributed to low intrinsic strength of coarse aggregates, relatively low
strength of the grout, weak homogeneity, stress concentration at the
contact points between aggregates, inherent weakness between coarse
aggregate and paste matrix. To sum up, UHPC and TSC have some
complementary characteristics on coarse aggregate utilization, binder
Fig. 1. The PSD of raw materials.
consumption and mechanical properties. Hence, there is potential to
design a novel building material to make full use of advantages of TSC
and UHPC and overcome their individual shortages. Four coarse basalt aggregates with different sizes are utilized to
This paper aims to develop two-stage ultra-high performance con- produce TS-UHPC, as shown in Fig. 2. To pre-estimate the ingredient
crete (TS-UHPC) as a novel building material, including fabrication consumption of designed TS-UHPC before concrete casting, the bulk
methodology, excellent mechanical properties, high volume coarse densities of basalt aggregates are first measured in accordance with EN
aggregate and very low binder consumption, possessing widely poten- 1097-3 [26], shown in Table 1. Then the masses of ingredients can be
tial application, e.g. impact resistant, underwater, massive, repaired, calculated as,
heavyweight, low-shrinkage and narrowly spaced reinforced concrete. mBA = ρbulk × 1m3 (1)
The properties of grouts are assessed by fresh behaviour, hydration
kinetics, pore structure and compressive strength. The mechanical be-
⎛ ρ ⎞
haviour of TS-UHPC is evaluated in terms of compressive and splitting mi = mi _ grout ⎜1 − bulk ⎟
tensile strength, as well as binder efficiency. The compatibility between ρspecific (2)
⎝ ⎠
grout and aggregate is analysed by assessing the interfacial transition
zone (ITZ). New models are proposed and validated to correlate the where mBA is the mass of basalt aggregates in TS-UHPC (kg/m3). mi and
compressive strength and tensile splitting strength of TS-UHPC, and mi_grout are the masses of other raw material i in TS-UHPC and the used
compressive strength of TS-UHPC and grout. The proposed TS-UHPC grout (kg/m3), respectively. ρbulk and ρspecific are the bulk and specific
concept further contributes to sustainability development of advanced densities of used basalt aggregates (kg/m3). The actual raw material
concrete materials and the proposed models can be applied to predict consumptions for 1 cubic meter during the tests are shown in Table 4.
the materials property. The mix 1–4 contain grout of G2, and basalt aggregates of 5–8 mm,
8–11 mm, 8–16 mm and 16–25 mm, respectively. Mix 5–6 include ba-
2. Experimental program salt aggregates of 8–16 mm, and grout of G1 and G3, respectively. It
should be noted that the volumes of coarse aggregates are around 55%,
2.1. Materials which is much higher than that in normal concrete.

In this study, several raw materials are used, including Portland 2.3. Mixing and casting procedure
cement CEM I 52.5 R (PC), densified micro-silica of Elkem Grade 920E
D (mS), limestone powder (LP), fine silica sand (S), coarse basalt ag- The coarse basalt aggregates are preplaced in a steel mould first.
gregate (BA), polycarboxylic ether (PCE) based superplasticizer (SP) Then, the ultra-high performance grout is prepared following the pro-
and tap water (W). Fig. 1 shows the particle size distribution of raw cedure: drying mixing (PC + mS + LP + S) for 2 min, adding 80%
materials. The detailed information about specific densities and oxide water and mixing for 3 min, sequentially adding remaining water in-
composition of the used materials are shown in Tables 1 and 2, re- corporated with SP and followed by mixing for about another 5 min.
spectively. After that, the fresh ultra-high performance grout is poured into the
preplaced coarse basalt aggregates. Several injecting methods can be
2.2. Mix design found in literature, such as covering the top of moulds with a perforated
plate and pumping grout into moulds from the bottom (need extra
The properties of TS-UHPC are mainly determined by two key as- pumping device and energy) [27], pouring the grout from the top of
pects: grout and aggregate. In this study, three ultra-high performance aggregates by gravity effect (difficult to observe any possible honey-
grouts are designed with relatively low water-to-powder ratios, with combed problem at bottom for finer aggregates) [22], injecting grout
different fine sand-to-powder ratios at 0, 0.5, and 1.0. The proportion of from bottom through a pipe by gravity effect (easy to adjust the in-
powders is optimized at 5% of micro-silica and 20% of limestone jecting pressure by different height) [20], or even scatting-filling coarse
powder by mass of the total powder, based on our previous research aggregate process [28]. Using an injecting pipe by gravity effect is
[12]. The water content and superplasticizer dosage are adjusted to chosen in this paper by considering quality control, convenience of
achieve a comparably desirable fluidity, with spread flow approxi- casting and economic benefit. The detail casting procedure for TS-
mately between 35 cm and 40 cm by using a Hägermann cone [1]. The UHPC is illustrated in Fig. 3(a). One example of the cross-section of
detailed recipes for the designed grouts are shown in Table 3. hardened concretes (100 × 100 mm2) by this casting procedure is

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P.P. Li, et al. Cement and Concrete Research 125 (2019) 105858

Table 1
Specific densities of raw materials.
Materials PC mS LP S W SP BA 5–8 BA 8–11 BA 8–16 BA 16–25

3
Specific density (kg/m ) 3150 2320 2710 2670 1000 1200 3050 2890 2710 3050
Bulk density (kg/m3) – – – – – – 1715 1582 1514 1563

shown in Fig. 3(b), which presents very homogeneous distribution of covered with plastic film to keep moisture for 1 day. Then, the hardened
coarse basalt aggregates and densified matrix. specimens are demoulded and cured in water under temperature of
20 ± 2 °C, and then tested after desirable dates.
2.4. Experimental and methods
2.4.6. Scanning electron microscopy
2.4.1. Fresh behaviour Small pieces of dried hydrated samples after 56 days water curing
The fresh behaviour of grout is described by mini slump flow, mini are impregnated with an epoxy resin and polished down to 1 μm. The
V-funnel flow time and wet packing density. The mini slump flow and polished samples were examined in a scanning electron microscope
flow time are measured by a mini truncated conical cone without (SEM, Bruker D2 Phaser) with an accelerating voltage of 15 kV.
jolting and a mini V-funnel, respectively, in conformity with the
EFNARC specification [29], at room temperature of about 20 ± 2 °C. 2.4.7. Water permeable porosity
The wet packing density ϕ is applied to reflect the compactness under The water permeable porosity of the hardened grout and TS-UHPC
the real wet condition, which is described by the solid concentration are measured by using the vacuum-saturation technique [6]. The
[30], samples are cut from the cubic specimens in Section 2.4.5 after 91 days
n ri ρ with a thickness of about 20 mm. The water permeable porosity φ (%)
ϕ= ∑i ρi (1 + w / s ) can be calculated as,
(3)
ms − md
where ri and ρi are the mass fraction and density of solid material i. ρ is φ= × 100
ms − m w (4)
the fresh density of paste. w/s is the water-to-solid ratio.
where ms, md and mw are the masses of sample measured in air after
2.4.2. Isothermal calorimetry water saturation by vacuum condition, in air after oven drying, in water
To research the hydration kinetics of the three different ultra-high after water saturation by vacuum condition, respectively. The detailed
performance grouts, an isothermal calorimeter is utilized to test the testing procedure can be seen in [6], and the value stability of ms and
heat flow, at the temperature of 20 ° C (TAM Air, Thermometric). The md is checked until reaching constant masses, respectively.
fresh grouts are immediately filled into an ampoule and then put into
the calorimeter. The heat flow is recorded continuously for approxi- 3. Results and discussion
mately 3 days.
3.1. Properties of grout
2.4.3. Thermal gravimetry
A Netzsch simultaneous analyser (model STA 449 C) is used to 3.1.1. Fresh behaviour
measure the thermal gravimetric (TG) and differential thermal gravi- The casting method and quality control of TS-UHPC are dependent
metric (DTG) curves of hardened grouts at the age of 56 days. The on excellent fresh behaviour of ultra-high performance grout. The fresh
measurement is conducted at the heating rate of 10 °C/min, from 20 °C behaviour of the three designed grouts is shown in Table 5. The mini
to 1000 °C under the flowing nitrogen environment. The samples are slump flow ranges from 41 cm to 36 cm, while the mini V-funnel flow
firstly ground and then the fineness is controlled by using a 63 μm sieve. time changes from 5.5 s to 9.7 s, by adjusting the water content and SP
dosage to meet the required self-compacting properties (slump flow of
2.4.4. Mercury intrusion porosimetry 24 to 26 cm and V-funnel time of 7 to 11 s) [29,33]. The fresh behaviour
The pore structures of the hardened grouts are measured by mer- of the grouts is sufficient to be filled into the voids between aggregates,
cury intrusion porosimetry (MIP, Micromeritics AutoPore IV). The inner by checking the apparent and cross-section characters, as shown in
parts of samples are crushed into small pieces of 2–4 mm after 56 days Fig. 3 (b). It also should be pointed out that the mini slump flow above
water curing. Dried specimens, around 1.5 g, are used for the analysis. 35 cm is appropriate for ultra-high performance grout to fill the voids of
The intrusion pressure changes from 0 to 227 MPa, with an Hg surface aggregates in this study. The wet packing density calculated based on
tension of 485 dynes/cm and contact angle of 130°. Eq. (3) continuously increases from 0.611 to 0.721, which means an
improved compactness in fresh state for ultra-high performance grout
2.4.5. Mechanical strength with the addition of an appropriate fine sand content. The air content of
The cubic specimens (50 × 50 × 50 mm3) of grouts are produced the grouts determined based on [6] vary from 1.4% to 2.6%.
for compressive strength test, based on EN 12390-3: 2009 [31]. The
cubic specimens (100 × 100 × 100 mm3) of TS-UHPC are cast for 3.1.2. Hydration and pore structure
compressive and splitting tensile strength test, following EN 12390-3: To understand the hydration and pore structure of the designed
2009 [31] and EN 12390-6: 2009 [32], respectively. All the samples are grouts, normalized heat flow, TG-mass loss and pore size distribution

Table 2
Oxide composition of powders.
Substance (%) CaO SiO2 Al2O3 Fe2O3 K2O Na2O SO3 MgO TiO2 MnO

PC 64.60 20.08 4.98 3.24 0.53 0.27 3.13 1.98 0.30 0.10
mS 0.90 93.06 – 2.06 1.15 0.63 1.28 0.70 – 0.07
LP 97.21 0.87 0.17 0.13 – – 0.11 1.17 0.01 0.01

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P.P. Li, et al. Cement and Concrete Research 125 (2019) 105858

Table 3
Recipes of designed grouts.
Mix (Ga) PC mS LP S water SP PC mS LP S water SP

3
Mass proportion (kg/m )

G1 0.75 0.05 0.20 0 0.200 1.3% 1378.0 91.9 367.5 0.0 367.5 23.9
G2 0.75 0.05 0.20 0.50 0.215 1.7% 1000.2 66.7 266.7 666.8 286.7 22.7
G3 0.75 0.05 0.20 1.00 0.240 2.0% 777.5 51.8 207.3 1036.6 248.8 20.7

Fig. 2. The coarse basalt aggregates.

Table 4 Table 5
Recipes of designed TS-UHPC (kg/m3). Fresh behaviour of grouts.
Mix no. Note PC mS LP S BA water SP Density Mix Flow (cm) Tv-funnel Fresh density Wet packing Air content
(s) (kg/m3) density
1 G2A8 430.9 28.7 114.9 287.2 1715 123.5 9.8 2710
2 G2A11 450.8 30.1 120.2 300.5 1582 129.2 10.2 2623 G1 41 5.5 2197 0.611 1.4%
3 G2A16 426.1 28.4 113.6 284.1 1514 122.1 9.7 2498 G2 38 9.2 2253 0.684 2.4%
4 G2A25 478.9 31.9 127.7 319.3 1563 137.3 10.9 2669 G3 36 9.7 2281 0.721 2.6%
5 G1A16 625.7 41.7 166.9 0.0 1514 166.9 10.8 2526
6 G3A16 341.5 22.8 91.1 455.3 1514 109.3 9.1 2543
dosage, as shown in Table 3, G3 (1.0) shows a longer time to reach the
peak, which indicates a larger retardation effect due to a higher PCE-
are measured. Fig. 4 shows the time-dependent normalized heat flow of type SP dosage and a higher water-to-binder ratio in UHPC system
ultra-high performance grouts with different sand contents, water [1,34,35]. This retardation effect is dominant in the hydration of bin-
amounts and PCE-type SP dosages. As seen from Table 3, the water ders, instead of the acceleration effect by fine sand particles.
proportion and SP dosage continuously increase with the increase of the Fig. 5 presents the thermogravimetric results with TG and DTG
sand content from 0 to 1.0 (sand-to-powder ratio), even though their curves. Three dominant peaks can be observed, which are respectively
absolute masses decrease. Compared to G1 without any sand, G2 (0.5) linked to the water loss from free water, C-S-H, ettringite and AFm
exhibits a shorter time to reach the peak of heat flow curve and releases dehydration (30–200 °C); decomposition of portlandite (CH)
more normalized heat, which is probably due to the nucleation effect of (400–500 °C); decarbonation of CaCO3 (600–800 °C) [36,37]. All the
the very fine particles of sand that accelerate the hydration of binders. three peaks tend to be weaker and sharper with the increased amount of
However, with further increasing the water-to-binder ratio and SP fine sand, which indicates the dilution effect of fine sand on active

Fig. 3. (a) casting procedure and (b) cross-section of TS-UHPC.

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P.P. Li, et al. Cement and Concrete Research 125 (2019) 105858

Fig. 4. Calorimetric results of grouts.

Fig. 6. C-S-H contents of gouts.

Fig. 5. Thermogravimetric results of grouts.

Fig. 7. CH contents of grouts.

binders. The contents of CH in designed grouts can be directly calcu-
lated from TG curves by,
be discussed in the following Section 3.3.1. G3 processing a higher
M hydration degree at a higher water-to-binder ratio should also generate
CH (%) = CH × ∆mCH (%)
MH (5) more CH content by the mass of binder. However, a continuous de-
crease of CH content by the mass of binder is observed from G1 of 10%
where MCH and MH are the molar masses of calcium hydroxide and to G3 of 8.1%. It is probably attributed to a better pozzolanic effect of
water, respectively. ΔmCH is the mass loss due to calcium hydroxide micro-silica in UHPC system with a higher water-to-binder ratio and
decomposition in percentage. Furthermore, the C-S-H contents can be consumes more CH to form C-S-H gel.
estimated based on mass loss between 150 °C to 400 °C [38], Fig. 8 shows the cumulative pore volume and differential pore size
MCSH distribution of the grouts, which includes the pore size from 5 nm to
C–S–H(%) = × ∆mCSH (%) 100 μm. It is clear that grout with a larger fine sand-to-powder ratio (up
2.1MH (6)
to 1.0 in this study) has lower cumulative pore volume, namely a lower
where MCSH is the molar mass of C-S-H gel. ΔmCSH is the mass loss porosity. The critical or threshold pore diameter (the peak on the pore
corresponding to C-S-H dehydration in percentage from TG curve size distribution curve in Fig. 8(b)), defined as the pore when achieving
(150–400 °C). The water content in C-S-H gel has been extensively in- the highest rate of mercury intrusion and beginning to penetrate the
vestigated, and varies depending on cement type, water-to-cement interior of sample [37,42], decreases from around 26 nm of G1 to 21 nm
ratio, hydration degree, mineral addition, relative humidity and tem- of G2 with the increase of fine sand addition, and further keeps at
perature, etc. [39–41], and the stoichiometric amount of water in this 21 nm till G3. In this study, the pore size can be categorized into three
study is taken as 2.1 in Eq. (6), as suggested in [39]. The contents of C- parts as: (I) large pore more than 40 nm (air pore and partly capillary
S-H and CH are shown in Figs. 6 and 7, respectively. Even though the pore), (II) medium pore from around 20 nm to 40 nm (capillary pore),
absolute C-S-H (by total grout) decreases with the increasing sand and (III) small pore from around 5 nm to 20 nm (partly gel pore and
content, the C-S-H content by the mass of binder (PC + mS) keeps al- capillary pore [43]). The three grouts share comparable pore volumes
most the same at around 34% from G1 to G2, and finally reaches up to from 40 nm to 100 nm, as shown in Fig. 8(a). While, with the addition
37.7% for G3. It indicates a higher hydration degree of active binder for of fine sand as filler, the grout of G2 (0.5), have a considerable decrease
G3 compared to G1, due to a higher water-to-binder ratio in G3. The of the pores between 20 nm and 40 nm compared to that of G1, which
higher hydration degree of G3 can also be directly observed by the can be attributed to the better compactness and reduced amount of the
amount of unreactive cement grains from the SEM observation that will paste. As can be seen in Table 5, although G2 has a higher water-to-

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P.P. Li, et al. Cement and Concrete Research 125 (2019) 105858

Fig. 8. Pore structure of grouts.

powder ratio that increases the capillary pores in the paste, G2 has a product, as can be seen in Table 3 and Fig. 6. After a longer curing time,
clearly lower amount of paste. Further addition of fine sand (G3) does all the grouts reach comparable compressive strengths at 7 days. Later
not obviously increase the wet packing density, and cannot further the grouts with more fine sand tend to surpass, e.g. 6.8% higher for G3
improve the pore size distribution from 20 nm and 40 nm. G2 has a compared to G1. Two main factors contribute to those higher later
higher pore volume from 5 nm to 20 nm compared to G3, which can be compressive strengths, including better compactness (shown in Table 5)
explained by the relatively more C-S-H gel content in the grout (see and relatively higher hydration degree of binders (analysed in Section
Fig. 6). The G2 and G3 have more pores from 5 nm to 20 nm compared 3.1.1). In overall, incorporating an appropriate amount of fine sand in
to G1, but less C-S-H gel phase (see Fig. 6), which indicates that more ultra-high performance grout can improve its strength and reduce the
low-density and more porous C-S-H gels are preferably generated in G2 binder consumption, which obviously contributes to sustainability de-
and G3 with higher water-to-powder ratios [43]. In overall, grout with velopment of advanced concrete materials.
a higher sand-to-powder ratio, 1.0 in this study, has a denser micro-
structure. 3.2. Mechanical behaviour of TS-UHPC

3.1.3. Strength development Table 6 summarizes the compressive strength (σc) and splitting
Fig. 9 shows the compressive strength development of grouts. The tensile strength (σt) of the designed TS-UHPC. The size effect of basalt
early age strengths are very high, ranging between 66 and 100 MPa at aggregate, grout type effect, correlation between compressive and
1 day, and then around 125 MPa at 7 days. The strength reaches be- splitting tensile strength of TS-UHPC, and binder efficiency compared
tween 142 MPa and 148 MPa at 28 days, and even higher at 91 days to normal TSC and UHPC will be discussed in the following sections.
between 162 MPa and 173 MPa. These results confirm that ultra-high
performance grouts can be successfully developed by applying the 3.2.1. Size effect of basalt aggregates
concept of UHPC, with both high early and later age strength. It could To analyse the size effect of coarse basalt aggregate, the mechanical
be used to design the TS-UHPC, and to predict the strength by that of strengths of TS-UHPC incorporated with G2 and different aggregate
grout (analysed in Section 3.3.3). sizes are measured at 28 days, as shown in Fig. 10. It should be noted
Grout with less fine sand processes higher early age strength before that currently most UHPCs are designed without applying any coarse
7 days, which is due to higher amount of active binders and hydration aggregate to improve homogeneity and eliminate intrinsic weakness
[2,3,5,44,45]. However, introduction of coarse aggregate has shown
advantages, including decrease of powders, economic benefits [12], low
shrinkage [28,46] and high impact resistance [47,48]. The utilized
powder contents of TS-UHPC are very low compared to normal UHPC
because the preplaced coarse basalt aggregates already occupy rather
large volume (around 55%). Although the coarser aggregates are easily
for grout to fill into the voids, the demanded powder contents are
comparable for coarse aggregates with different sizes. Fig. 10 indicates
a continuous decrease of both compressive and splitting tensile strength
of TS-UHPC when increasing the maximum size of basalt aggregates,
from 142.1 MPa to 121.8 MPa for compressive strength and 7.4 MPa to
6.5 MPa for splitting tensile strength. Because the volume of basalt
aggregates is very similar, this reduction is mainly determined by the
size effect of basalt aggregate. However, the reduction is not significant,
approximately 14.3% and 12.2% respectively, with the maximum size
from 8 mm to 25 mm. This limited decreasing tendency is in line with
the conventional UHPC in our previous study [12]. The compressive
damage pattern of the designed TS-UHPC usually shows an “explosive
failure” as described in EN 12390–3: 2009 [31], which is similar to that
Fig. 9. Compressive strength of grouts. of high strength concrete or plain UHPC.

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P.P. Li, et al. Cement and Concrete Research 125 (2019) 105858

Table 6
Strength of TS-UHPC (MPa).
Mix Compressive strength σc Splitting tensile strength σt

1d 3d 7d 28d 56d 91d 1d 3d 7d 28d 56d 91d

G2A8 – – – 142.1 – – – – – 7.4 – –

G2A11 – – – 131.0 – – – – – 7.1 – –
G2A16 80.5 105.3 114.1 116.2 124.0 140.1 4.0 5.9 6.3 6.6 6.9 7.5
G2A25 – – – 121.8 – – – – – 6.5 – –
G1A16 87.4 109.5 111.3 113.0 118.1 127.6 4.5 5.3 5.6 5.9 6.1 6.6
G3A16 71.1 103.2 114.2 121.1 133.9 151.8 4.2 6.1 6.8 7.2 7.8 8.8

150 15 127.6 MPa to 151.8 MPa.

Splitting tensile strength (MPa)

Compressive strength (MPa)

3.2.3. Correlation between compressive and splitting tensile strength of TS-

120 G2A8 12 UHPC
G2A11 For certain engineering applications, both compressive strength and
G2A16 G2A25 tensile strength are of interest, such as the design of highway and air-
90 9 field slabs, and cracking resistant component. Normally, a TSC pro-
cessing a higher compressive strength has a larger splitting tensile
60 6 strength. Several empirical equations have been established to present
the correlation between the compressive strength (σc_concrete) and
splitting tensile strength (σt_concrete) of conventional TSC, such as
30 Compressive strength 3 Abdelgader and Ben-Zeitun [49], Rajabi and Omidi-Moaf. [23], re-
Splitting tensile strength spectively, as,
σt _ concrete = 0.768∙σc0.441
_ concrete (7)
0 0
8 11 16 25
σt _ concrete = 0.638∙σc0.460
_ concrete (8)
Max. size of basalt (mm)
Successful applications of those empirical equations have been
Fig. 10. Strength of TS-UHPC with different aggregate sizes at the age of confirmed by properties of conventional TSC with relatively low
28 days.
strength. The empirical formulas usually follow the type of
σt_concrete = k ∙ σc_concreten, where k and n are coefficients. Values of n for
3.2.2. Effect of grout type on strength development normal concrete have been suggested below 0.75 by e.g. American
Fig. 11 shows the strength development of TS-UHPC with different Concrete Institute and Euro Code, which indicates that σt_concrete-to-
types of grouts at the maximum basalt size of 16 mm. The strength σc_concrete ratio decreases with an increase in σc_concrete [50]. However,
development of TS-UHPC follows the similar trend to that of ultra-high those empirical predicting models are not appropriate for the TS-UHPC
performance grout, namely smaller early strengths before 7 days and developed in this study, as shown in Fig. 12. Hence, a new model fol-
surpassed larger later strengths, with higher fine sand contents. The lowing the same format is proposed to describe the correlation between
development rates of compressive and splitting tensile strength are not compressive strength and splitting tensile strength of TS-UHPC,
synchronized. TS-UHPC with more fine sand develops a faster splitting
σt _ concrete = 0.029∙σc1.129 (R2 = 0.81) (9)
tensile strength, which indicates that splitting tensile strength is more concrete

positively sensitive to fine aggregates. The increase rate of tensile Fig. 12 shows a successful prediction on relationship between
strength is approximately 33% from 6.6 MPa (G1A16) to 8.8 MPa compressive and splitting tensile strength of TS-UHPC, where the R2
(G3A16) at 91 days, while 19% for compressive strength from value is 0.81. It can be seen that the experimental results of the

160 10
Splitting tensile strength (MPa)
Compressive strength (MPa)

140
8

120
6
100

G1A16 4 G1A16
80 G2A16 G2A16
G3A16 G3A16
60 2
1 10 100 1 10 100
Age (d) Age (d)
(a) (b)
Fig. 11. Strength of TS-UHPC with different grouts.

7
P.P. Li, et al. Cement and Concrete Research 125 (2019) 105858

10 Experimental results under similar curing condition. It indicates that the designed TS-UHPC
Splitting tensile strength (MPa) Proposed model, Eq.(9) has a comparable compressive strength compared to other conventional
Abdelgader and Ben-Zeitun model, Eq.(7) UHPC in literatures, but very low binder amount (as low as 364 kg/m3)
8 Rajabi and Omidi-Moaf model, Eq.(8)
and high binder efficiency (as high as 0.417). The designed TS-UHPC
shows similar low or even lower binder consumption to normal TSC,
6 approximately 350–700 kg/m3, which is attributed to the high volume
coarse aggregate consumption. However, the designed TS-UHPC can
greatly overcome the relatively low strength of ordinary TSC (usually
4
less than 70 MPa), and results in a much higher binder efficiency. The
high binder efficiency of the designed TS-UHPC is attributed to very
2 low water amount, pozzolanic addition and high-strength basalt ag-
gregates. In overall, TS-UHPC is successfully developed combined with
0 the advantages of both TSC and UHPC, namely very low binder amount,
0 30 60 90 120 150 high binder efficiency, high volume of coarse aggregate, and ultra-high
Compressive strength (MPa) strength.

Fig. 12. Compressive versus splitting tensile strength of TS-UHPC. 3.3. Compatibility between grout and aggregates

designed TS-UHPC are usually above the empirical curves of Eqs. 3.3.1. SEM observation
(7)–(8), especially when the compressive strength surpasses 120 MPa. The mechanical property of the developed concrete is determined
The coefficient n is 1.129 (slightly larger than 1), which means that by the inherent property of the three phases: aggregate, grout and in-
σt_concrete-to-σc_concrete ratio slightly increases with an increase in terfacial transition zone (ITZ). Normally, the ITZ is regarded as the
σc_concrete. It is concluded that the designed TS-UHPC has a higher weakest part of matrix and has a great influence on the mechanical and
σt_concrete-to-σc_concrete ratio compared to the conventional TSC, in- transport properties [56,57]. The ITZ is originally induced by water
dicating a wider engineering application potential thanks to the higher films around the aggregates and normally characterized by a higher
splitting tensile strength. The relatively higher σt_concrete-to-σc_concrete porosity and larger pores compared to the paste, massive portlandite
ratio of TS-UHPC is probably attributed to the less shrinkage-induced crystals precipitation, higher amount of porous ettringite and low-
micro-cracks due to very low binder utilization, and high intrinsic density C-S-H [56–58]. The ITZ of the designed TS-UHPC can be ob-
strength of basalt that provides aggregate bridging effect on tensile served by SEM images, as shown in Fig. 14. Obviously, all the three
strength [51]. ultra-high performance grouts can contribute to very tight ITZ with
coarse basalt aggregate, compared to the ITZ in normal TSC [24]. The
3.2.4. Binder efficiency very dense ITZ is probably due to the very low water-to-binder ratios
As can be seen in Table 4, the designed TS-UHPC has low binder and excellent workability of the designed ultra-high performance
consumption, ranging between 364 kg/m3 and 667 kg/m3, which is grouts, which contribute to low porosities for both hardened ITZ and
significantly lower compared to conventional UHPC (usually more than paste.
900 kg/m3) [8]. To further analyse the advantage of binder consump-
tion and economic benefit of designed TS-UHPC, the binder efficiency X 3.3.2. Porosity of grout, TS-UHPC and ITZ-induced
is applied as [13], Besides the SEM observation, some quantitative methods are also
used to directly analyse the ITZ property, e.g. statistical nano-in-
X = σc / mbinder (10)
dentation technique. However, they are usually complex and rely on
where X is binder efficiency (MPa·kg/m3), σc is the compressive expensive testing device [59,60]. In this study, a simple quantitative
strength of TS-UHPC (MPa) after 28 days, in this study the binder ef- method, the water permeable porosity method, is utilized to further
ficiency after 91 days is also calculated. mbinder is the total mass of describe and analyse the ITZ. If the water permeable porosity of basalt
binders (kg/m3), namely cement and micro-silica in this study. aggregate is regarded as zero, the part of water permeable porosities in
Fig. 13 shows the binder efficiencies of designed TS-UHPC com- TS-UHPC caused by the ITZ can be deduced as,
pared to other reported UHPC [3,13,52–55] and TSC [33] without fibre φITZ − ind uced = φconcrete − φgrout × rgrout (11)
where φITZ−induced is the ITZ-induced water permeable porosity; φconcrete
and φITZ are the water permeable porosities of TS-UHPC and grout,
respectively; rgrout is the volume fraction of grout in TS-UHPC. The
φITZ−induced, φconcrete and φgrout at 91 days are shown in Fig. 15, re-
spectively. Both grout and TS-UHPC have a diminished water perme-
able porosities with the increasing content of fine sand, from 16.06% to
8.47% and 8.00% to 4.98%, respectively, which are in line with the
trends to wet packing densities in Table 5 and mechanical strengths in
Figs. 9 and 11. The water permeable porosities of TS-UHPC can be
greatly improved in comparison with the corresponding grouts, due to
the high content of aggregate utilization. However, the ITZ-induced
water permeable porosities have a converse trend, increasing from
G1A16 of 0.91% to G3A16 of 1.25%. The ITZ-induced porosity in the
designed TS-UHPC (0.91%–1.25%) is much smaller compared to the
normal concrete (1.7%–2.8%) with a comparable aggregate volume
content (55%) [57], which demonstrates that the quality of the ITZ is
very good. The relatively low ITZ-induced water permeable porosities
are attributed to the designed ultra-high performance grout with su-
Fig. 13. Binder efficiency of the designed TS-UHPC. perior fluidity to avoid entraining air void, relatively low water amount

8
P.P. Li, et al. Cement and Concrete Research 125 (2019) 105858

Fig. 14. SEM images of TS-UHPC, (a) G1A16, (b) G2A16, (c) G3A16.

160
Experimental results

Compressive strength (MPa)

Data from [57]
145

130

115

100
4 6 8 10 11
Water-permeable porosity (%)
Fig. 15. Water-permeable porosity of grout, TS-UHPC and ITZ-induced. Fig. 16. Correlation between water-permeable porosity and compressive
strength.

to reduce the water films around aggregates, addition of extra pozzo-

lanic material (5% of micro silica in this paper) in grout to enhance the strength of basalt aggregate is not reached in this study, with the
C-S-H generation. maximum strength of grout at around 180 MPa. Some researchers re-
To further analyse the influence of the ITZ-induced porosity ported that the strength of basalt is usually more than 200 MPa [47,62].
(0.91%–1.32%) on mechanical properties of the designed TS-UHPC, the Hence, we can conclude that basalt aggregate is a good choice to pro-
correlations between water-permeable porosity and compressive duce TS-UHPC, which can match the strength of ultra-high performance
strength are compared with the existing results from literature [61], as grout. It has to be noted that the strength of TS-UHPC is always lower
shown in Fig. 16. It can be found that the compressive strength of TS- than the corresponding grout, due to the weakness of ITZ and strength
UHPC has almost a linear decrease with the increase of water-perme- concentration by point-to-point contact between aggregates [20].
able porosity. Compared to the correlation in conventional UHPC, the The strengths of both grout (σc_grout) and TSC (σc_concrete) depend on
designed TS-UHPC has a lower water-permeable porosity thanks to the the similar key factors, including quality of mixing, binder amount,
high volume of coarse aggregate utilization. Furthermore, all the ex- water content and fluidity [19], as well as fine sand addition and SP
perimental results in this study are above the trend line of conventional dosage. This dependence has been investigated by Abdelgader [19] as,
UHPC, which means the water-permeable porosity has relatively lower
σc _ concrete = 6.70 + 0.42∙σc1.07
_ grout (12)
negative effect on compressive strength of TS-UHPC compared to that
of conventional UHPC. It also indicates the additional porosity caused The empirical relationship offers a potential method to estimate TSC
by ITZ has rather limited negative effect on mechanical properties of strength by primary grout strength. However, this empirical equation
TS-UHPC. Those phenomena are probably due to the high intrinsic underestimates the compressive strength of the designed TS-UHPC,
strength or bonding ability of the basalt aggregates. which is due to the utilized UHPC grouts and high-strength of basalt
aggregates. Because the volumes of used grouts are in a very narrow
3.3.3. Predicting compressive strength of TS-UHPC range, around 45%, the compressive strength is mostly determined by
For a practical engineering application, it is wise to propose a model the strength of grouts and the particle size of coarse aggregates. A new
to predict the strength of TS-UHPC by a simple and reliable formula. formula is proposed by considering both the effects of the used ultra-
Except for ITZ, the aggregate and grout are the other critical phases in high performance cement grouts and the coarse aggregates size, ap-
concrete. Hence, the strength of aggregate and grout should be com- plying the regression analysis of the present results to predict the
patible and match with each other. The compressive strength of TS- compressive strength of TS-UHPC as,
UHPC can continuously increase when increasing the strength of grouts σc _ concrete = (5.8 − 0.05Dmax ) ∙σc0.64
_ grout (R2 = 0.85) (13)
(seen in Fig. 9 and Table 6), which indicates that the limit of inherent

9
P.P. Li, et al. Cement and Concrete Research 125 (2019) 105858

180 TS-UHPC is a newly developed ultra-low binder ultra-high perfor-

+10% mance concrete concept with widely potential application, e.g. impact
resistant, underwater, massive, repaired, heavyweight, low-shrinkage
Experimental results (MPa)

150
concrete. Many key parameters and properties remain to be explored.
-10% Different types of coarse aggregates, ultra-high performance grout with
120 optimal water and sand content, introduction of steel fibres are sug-
gested to future research on mix design. Properties, such as impact
90 resistance under bullet or projectile impact, shrinkage, abrasion re-
sistance, thermo-mechanical behaviour of mass concrete can be scope
for future study by both experimental and mesoscale modelling ana-
60
lysis.

30 Acknowledgements

0 This research was funded by the China Scholarship Council and

0 30 60 90 120 150 180 Eindhoven University of Technology. Thanks are given to Mr. Gang Liu
Predicting results (MPa) for his help with experiments.

Fig. 17. Validation of predicting model.

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