Synthesized hydrogel co-polymerized with hydrophobic n-butyl methacrylate and its impact on shrinkage mitigation and crack resistance of cement paste

Synthesized hydrogel co-polymerized with hydrophobic n-butyl methacrylate and its impact on shrinkage mitigation and crack resistance of cement paste

Internal curing using super-absorbent polymers (SAPs) is an effective method to mitigate the autogenous shrinkage of cement paste. However, conventional SAPs, such as acrylamide/acrylic sodium copolymer, often leave voids in situ after water release, causing significant strength reduction. To addres...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Yiqun Guo, Yinghui Huang, Tongsheng Zhang, Tao Wang, Yuwei Ma, Mingxing Ni, Siqing Zeng, Jiangxiong Wei, Qijun Yu
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Elsevier 2025-07-01
Series:Case Studies in Construction Materials
Subjects:
Hydrogel
Cement paste
Autogenous shrinkage
Crack resistance
Internal curing
Collapse
Online Access:http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214509525000609
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Summary:Internal curing using super-absorbent polymers (SAPs) is an effective method to mitigate the autogenous shrinkage of cement paste. However, conventional SAPs, such as acrylamide/acrylic sodium copolymer, often leave voids in situ after water release, causing significant strength reduction. To address this issue, we developed a low-shrinkage hydrogel (BMH) synthesized using hydrophobic n-butyl methacrylate, which prevents volume collapse by enhancing polymer network stability and maintaining stable interfacial bonding with the cement matrix. Adding just 1 % BMH nearly eliminated autogenous shrinkage at 7 days by significantly reducing capillary stress and resulted in a 64.1 % reduction in crack area compared with conventional SAPs. The no-collapse characteristic of BMH ensures a wider and more uniform distribution of the internal cured region, effectively avoiding in-situ void formation and reducing strength loss (low as 20.7 %), and the conventional SAP leads to 34.9 % strength loss with 1 % SAP addition. The utilization of engineered hydrogel with hydrophobic component provides a novel strategy to reduce deformation and cracking sensitivity of cement-based materials without severe strength reduction.
ISSN:2214-5095

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