0000000000320191
AUTHOR
Luis Pegado
showing 3 related works from this author
Mechanism of aluminium incorporation into C–S–H from ab initio calculations
2014
Blended cements have great potential to reduce the CO2 footprint due to cement production. C(alcium)–S(ilicate)–H(ydrate) in these novel materials is known to incorporate a considerable amount of Al. We have for the first time applied large-scale first principles calculations to address the mechanism of Al incorporation into low C/S ratio C–S–H. In agreement with state-of-the-art NMR information, our calculations show that Al substitutes Si in bridging tetrahedra only, and that substitutions in pairing tetrahedra are strongly disfavoured in a wide range of conditions. In broad terms, the energy penalty for having an Al atom in a pairing position is of about 20 kcal mol−1. Al in bridging tet…
Intrinsic Acidity of Surface Sites in Calcium Silicate Hydrates and Its Implication to Their Electrokinetic Properties
2014
Calcium Silicate Hydrates (C–S–H) are the major hydration products of portland cement paste. The accurate description of acid–base reactions at the surface of C–S–H particles is essential for both understanding the ion sorption equilibrium in cement and prediction of mechanical properties of the hardened cement paste. Ab initio molecular dynamics simulations at the density functional level of theory were applied to calculate intrinsic acidity constants (pKa’s) of the relevant ≡SiOH and ≡CaOH2 groups on the C–S–H surfaces using a thermodynamic integration technique. Ion sorption equilibrium in C–S–H was modeled applying ab initio calculated pKa’s in titrating Grand Canonical Monte Carlo simu…
Attractive ion-ion correlation forces and the dielectric approximation.
2016
We analyze the classical problem of the interaction between two charged surfaces separated by a solution containing neutralizing counter-ions. The focus is on obtaining a description where the solvent is treated explicitly rather than through a dielectric approximation as is conventionally done. We summarize the results of three papers where we have used a Stockmayer fluid model in Monte Carlo simulations. It is shown that the attractive ion-ion correlation mechanism is also operating when the solvent is described explicitly. There appears an oscillatory component to the force, but when this is accounted for, there is a semi-quantitative agreement between the continuum model and the model w…