Organic admixtures and cement particles: Competitive adsorption and its macroscopic rheological consequences
Résumé
In this work,we study the competitive adsorption in cement paste between a superplasticizer and a so-called viscosity agent along with the competitive adsorption between the same superplasticizer and a retarder.We develop a new protocol using dynamic light scattering, which allows for distinguishing the relative adsorption of different fractions of admixtureswhen introduced simultaneously in cement paste. Our results show that the result of competitive adsorption is not only a matter of admixture chemical structures or physical properties but is also very dependent on surface coverage. We identify from our results, similarly to other authors in polymer literature,
threemain competitive adsorption regimes.Wefinally showthat the outcome of competitive adsorption measured at the microscopic scale can explain the measured macroscopic variations in rheology in terms of yield stress and viscosity.