Main Structural Material Testing

Yang, Z., Xiao, H., Zhang, L., Feng, D., Zhang, F., Jiang, M., ... & Jia, L. (2020). Measurement, 149, 106990.

Cement is an irreplaceable basic material in national economic construction, and its quality is directly related to the safety of people's lives and property. During the production process, the ratio of cement raw materials directly determines the quality of the cement, so it is necessary to reduce the fluctuation of the ratio to promote production. Cement is mainly composed of oxides such as calcium oxide (CaO), silicon dioxide (SiO₂), aluminum oxide (Al₂O₃), and ferric oxide (Fe₂O₃). Therefore, by detecting the relative changes in the content of these oxides in the cement raw meal, the ratio of raw materials can be fed back and controlled.

Using near-infrared spectroscopy combined with chemometric tools such as PLS, iPLS, and siPLS, calibrated by the XRF test method, the four main oxides (CaO, SiO₂, Al₂O₃, and Fe₂O₃) in the cement raw meal can be rapidly determined to monitor the cement production process.

Li, B., Tian, Y., Zhang, G., Liu, Y., Feng, H., Jin, N., ... & Wang, J. (2023). Scientific Reports, 13(1), 19980.

Carbonation is one of the main causes of the decline in the durability of concrete. Almost all concrete materials undergo carbonation due to the CO₂ in the environment during their service life. In the study of concrete carbonation, accurately measuring and evaluating the carbonation depth of concrete is particularly important. Therefore, methods such as phenolphthalein indicator, thermogravimetric analysis, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy, nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, and X-ray phase analysis have been developed and applied to characterize the carbonation of concrete.

Hrdlička, Aleš, et al. Spectrochimica Acta Part B: Atomic Spectroscopy 142 (2018): 8-13.

Concrete is a widely used composite building material. Basically, it is a mixture of cement as the binding agent powder component and stone as the filler component with water. The analysis of concrete and other building materials is an extremely important issue. One of the important analytes is sulfur. Sulfur compounds are natural constituents of building materials such as gypsum or concrete boards. However, the intrusion of sulfates or sulfuric acid poses a significant risk of chemical corrosion to concrete.

One suitable method for the determination of sulfur in solid samples is Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS). The main advantage of this technique is the direct determination of elements (including non-metals) from solid samples. The relatively high detection limits (LODs) for non-metals make this method limited for many samples. However, sulfur and chlorine in concrete can be successfully determined using LIBS.