Effects of stone powder on microstructure of manufactured-sand concrete and its gas permeability

With the development of infrastructure construction, natural sand resources have become increasingly scarce, and the use of manufactured sand has become inevitable. The unique stone powder in manufactured sand could significantly influent the concrete performance. To characterize the stone powder, a physical filling model was used to quantify the particle grading buildup. Isothermal calorimetry and thermogravimetric analysis determined the corresponding chemical activities. Subsequently, non-destructive testing flow methods were designed, referred to as nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and hydrostatic balance (HB), to test the pore structure, and a quasi-stationary flow method was used to test the gas permeability of the manufactured sand concrete. Finally, a random hierarchical bundle model using the NMR-HB method was proposed to predict the gas permeability of concrete based on the pore size distribution. The results showed that a moderate amount of stone powder could reduce the heat of hydration, increase the hydration products, improve the filling effect, and decrease gas permeability. A certain fineness of the stone powder could increase the heat of hydration, increase the hydration products, compact the pores from 4.5 to 50 nm, reduce the filling effect, and increase gas permeability. The maximum relative difference between the predicted and experimental gas permeability values of the random tube bundle model was reduced to 34.38 % using the NMR-HB method, whereas this value was 70.87 % using the mercury intrusion porosimetry (MIP) method.