Cement, Ceramics, and Composites

This skill was lost during the Middle Ages and was not rediscovered until the scientific approach was taken by John Smeaton in 1757 when he built the Eddystone lighthouse on the southwest coast of England. He found that a good hydraulic cement was formed when the limestone used had clay impurities. We now know that aluminosilicate clays, when calcined with lime, form the desired cement. Between 1757 and 1830, the essential roles of the lime and silica were established by Vicat and Lisage in France and by Parker and Frost in England. 

Portland cement presently constitutes over 60% of all cement produced and is a carefully apportioned combination of the oxides of calcium, silica, aluminum, and iron. 

Roussak and H.D. Gesser, Applied Chemistry A Textbook for Engineers and Technologists, DOI 10.1007/978-l-4614-4262-2 17, Springer Science+Business Media New York 2013 

Year US production US imports US exports World production 

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J. Bell, M. Gordon, and W. M. Kriven, "Use of Geopolymeric Cements as a Refractory Adhesive for Metal and Ceramic Joins" pp. 407-13 in Ceramic Engineering and Science Proceedings, Vol. 26, The 29th International Conference on Advanced Ceramics and Composites. Edited by D. Zhu, K. 

Properties of CBCs lie between ceramics and cements. These materials are formed at room temperature like cements, or may be synthesized at slightly elevated temperatures, but their structure is highly crystalline or glass-crystalline composite. The particles in CBCs are bonded by a paste formed by chemical reaction, as in cements, but the particles themselves are mostly crystalline. Their strengths are higher than those of cements but fall short of sintered ceramics. Their corrosion resistance is close to ceramics, but at the same time, they may be vulnerable to erosion like cements. The ease of formation of these ceramics, their rapid setting behavior and low cost make them very attractive for the various applications discussed in this book. 

The modem technological needs of stmctural materials are not fulfilled entirely by these two types of materials. There is also a need for materials that exhibit properties in between cement and sintered ceramics. That need can be met by CBPC matrix composites—materials that are produced like cements at ambient or at slightly elevated temperatures, but exhibit properties of ceramics. These composites are attractive for many stmctural applications, including architectural products, oil-field drilling cements, road repair materials that set in very cold environments, stabilization of radioactive and hazardous waste streams, and biomaterials. 

This book contains papers from the Fourth International Conference on Computational Methods and Experiments in Materials Characterisation which brought researchers who use computational methods, those who perform experiments, and of course those who do both, in all areas of materials characterisation, to discuss their recent results and ideas, in order to foster the multidisciplinary approach that has become necessary for the study of complex phenomena. The papers in the book cover the follow topics Advances in Composites Ceramics and Advanced Materials Alloys Cements Biomaterials Thin Films and Coatings Imaging and Image Analysis Thermal Analysis New Methods Surface Chemistry Nano Materials Damage Mechanics Fatigue and Fracture Innovative Computational Techniques Computational Models and Experiments Mechanical Characterisation and Testing. 

Composites are combinations of more than one material or phase. Ceramics are used in many composites, often for reinforcement. For example, one of the reasons a B-2 stealth bomber is stealthy is that it contains over 22 tons of carbon/epoxy composite. In some composites the ceramic is acting as the matrix (ceramic matrix composites or CMCs). An early example of a CMC dating back over 9000 years is brick. These often consisted of a fired clay body reinforced with straw. Clay is an important ceramic and the backbone of the traditional ceramic industry. In concrete, both the matrix (cement) and the reinforcement (aggregate) are ceramics. 

A special ceramic is hydraulic (or water-cured) cement. World production of hydraulic cement is about 1.5 billion tons per year. The top three producers are China, Japan, and the United States. When mixed with sand and gravel, we obtain concrete—the most widely utilized construction material in the industrialized nations. In essence, concrete is a ceramic matrix composite (CMC) in which not just the matrix but also the reinforcing material is ceramic. 

Cement A ceramic matrix composite cement is the matrix and aggregate (sand and smail pebbies, or historically pumice) is the reinforcement... 

A. R. Bhatti and P. M. Farries, Preparation of Long-fiber-reinforced Dense Glass and Ceramic Matrix Composites, in Carbon/carbon, Cement and Ceramic Matrix Composites, R. Warren, Ed., Elsevier Science Ltd., Oxford, (2000). p. 645-667. 

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