Early age properties of cementitious materials by electrical resistivity measurement

Three cement pastes were prepared with the fixed water-binder ratio and different fly ash contents. The compression test and electrical resistivity measurement of the paste mixes were conducted during 48 h. The changes of the CH content and the non-evaporable water content in the cement-fly ash hydration systems with time were obtained by the thermal gravimetric analysis. The experimental results show that dilution effect of fly ash as micro-filler is dominant mechanism before 48 h, which appears to decrease in the CH content and the non-evaporable water content, also in compressive strength and electrical resistivity, with the increase of fly ash replacement. The relationships between CH content, non-evaporable water content and electrical resistivity show that electrical resistivity can be the indicators of hydration products CH and non-evaporable water. The correlation of the compressive strength fc and the electrical resistivity ρ can be obtained as fc=8.3429 ρ = 6.7088 for the period of 48 h. The early age compressive strength can then be predicted by electrical resistivity measurement.