Professor, University of Paris-Saclay, Evry, France

Speech Title: New Trends in Understanding and Monitoring Nanocrystallites Development in Cement Pastes
Abstract: Cement nanocrystallites constitute the binding phase in concrete, a material that has been around for more than two thousand years and remains the most widely used of manufactured materials. Thanks to their size, their disordered nature, their reprecipitation after combination with water, and their rapid evolution when the concrete sets, these nanostructures have only been subjected to careful investigation quite recently. Nanotechnology is now able to control their formation and exploit their evolution (shrinking and swelling) during the setting phase to produce a concrete with a strength and ductility close to those of steels. Furthermore, the analysis of basic nanoscopic reactions occurring during setting, their modification by polymer additives acting at the interfaces, and numerical modelling techniques are potentially able to predict big evolutions and properties of nanocrystallites. Here we discuss the future of these nanocrystallites in new applications.