Evaluation the compressive strength of the cement paste blended with supplementary cementitious materials using a piezoelectric-based sensor

This paper aims to investigate the feasibility of using piezoelectric-based sensors to characterize the compressive strength gain process of cement paste blended with supplementary cementitious materials. The electromechanical impedance technique was used for in-situ monitoring of the strength gain of cement pastes. Two different indices of root mean square deviation (RMSD) and correlation coefficient (CC) have been used to establish a quantitative correlation between the conductance signature obtained by lead zirconate titanate (PZT) sensors and the compressive strength of cement paste. Both indices exhibited a reasonable qualitative trend which was compatible with the trend of strength gain of cement pastes. However, the RMSD was found to be more efficient than CC index in estimating the compressive strength of cement paste over time. The experimental results indicate that EMI can be used as a nondestructive testing (NDT) method to enable in-situ measurement of strength gain process of cement paste with supplementary cementitious materials.