Mechanical Behavior of Concrete, Made with Micro-Nano Air Bubbles

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Nano materials have been widely used in laboratory and industrial scales in order to improve various properties of concrete and concrete mixture. The mainstream practice of the researches in this field is to add metallic nano-particles into the concrete mixture. The present research focuses on adding Micro-Nano Air Bubbles (MNAB) into water before mixing it with aggregate and cement mixtures. It studies the compressive and tensile strength as well as other engineering properties of the concrete such as the initial and final setting time and the variation in temperature during the setting. The ratio of water/cement was 0.6 with three specimens, prepared for each mixed design to ensure the data quality. Results showed that MNAB-made concrete had 19% higher compression and 16% tensile strength, while the initial and final setting times were significantly shorter (approximately a half) and hydration temperature was notably lower than ordinary concrete.