• Journal of the Korea Institute of Building Construction
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.359-365
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• 2015

Floor mortar experiences dry shrinkage by temperature and humidity difference of internal matrix with material type. Also, since floor mortar is influenced by environmental conditions during placing and curing period, cracks are likely to be occurred. In this study, it was evaluated the hardening and dry shrinkage properties of non-sintered binder based floor mortar utilizing alpha-hemihydrate gypsum which has expansibility in order to prevent crack of the floor mortar. It was applied to the construction site, and examined the effects of external environmental conditions on shrinkage deformation and cracking. Different types of slag accelerated initial and final setting in comparison with cement mortar and its compressive strength was satisfied standard compressive strength for floor mortar. Also shrinkage deformation behavior after the initial expansion exhibited a similar tendency with the cement mortar. From the field application result, no crack was found from slag mortar, and it is determined that the slag mortar has better dimensional stability than cement mortar caused by external environment conditions.

• KCI Concrete Journal
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.171-177
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• 2002

Antifungal agents are used to impart antibacterial or bactericidal properties to commodities and various articles used in industries and can be classified into two broad groups i.e organic and inorganic. Inorganic antifungal agents comprise of Ag, Zn, or Cu, etc. These elements tend to exhibit high level of antifungal activities, non-uniform dispersion in substrates, and have poor properties in expensive and cheap adhesiveness. In this study, the organic antifungal agent was used for the purpose of investigating the antifungal activity of antifungal agent activated-cement mortar (AACM) on the aspergilus niger of various fungus which can be easily discovered in the interiors and exteriors of buildings. In addition, an experiment on the basic physical properties of AACM such as compressive and flexural strength was carried out. The conclusion of this investigation revealed that a dosage increase of antifungal agent exhibits a high inhibitory effect on the aspergilus niger, and although there is a slight decrease in the strength of AACM, the strength of AACM was almost equal to that of inactivated cement mortar.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Building Construction
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• v.22 no.5
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• pp.441-450
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• 2022

In this study, the fluidity and strength characteristics of NSC mortar according to the type and rate of addition of superplasticizer were analyzed to secure the fluidity of NSC composed of only slag and ash. Through the flow test, it was found that the fluidity of NSC was related to the basicity according to the binder condition, and the lower the reactivity, the higher the fluidity. When polycarboxylate is added, NSC mortar is considered to be more advantageous than plain mortar in terms of securing fluidity. As a result of the strength tests of NSC mortar containing Lignin or Polycarboxylate superplasticizer, it was found that the strength tends to increase as the basicity increases. In addition, when polycarboxylate is added, it is judged that the NSC mortar can secure adequate fluidity and strength at the same time. Through this experiment, an appropriate binder condition that satisfies the flowability while securing the strength was derived.

• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.10-18
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• 2018

The primary purposes of this study are to understand a fundamental aspect of current uniformity around a reinforcing bar (rebar) in cement mortar, and to develop an accurate monitoring method in a wet-dry cycling process with the alternative current (AC) impedance method. Three cement mortar specimens with two embedded rebars were prepared in the laboratory. As a main variable, the distance between two rebars was designed to be 10, 20 and 30 mm with the same thickness of 20 mm. To simulate the corrosion of rebars in concrete structures in a marine environment, three cement mortar specimens were exposed to 15 wet-drying cycles (24-hour-immersion in seawater and 48-hour-drying in a room temperature) in the laboratory. It was observed that the potential level shifted to a noble value during corrosion potential monitoring, which is attributed to acceleration of dissolved oxygen diffusion at the drying process. AC impedance was measured in a frequency range from 100 kHz to 1 mHz on a wet-drying process. A theoretical model was proposed to explain the interface condition between the rebars and cement mortar by using the equivalent circuit consisting of a solution resistance, a charge transfer resistance and a CPE (constant phase element). It was observed that the diffusion impedance appeared in a low frequency range as corrosion of rebars progresses. At the drying stage of the wet-drying cycles, the currents line for monitoring tended to be non-uniform at the interface of rebar/mortar, being phase shift, ${\theta}$, close to $-45^{\circ}$.

• Proceedings of the Korea Concrete Institute Conference
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• 2001.05a
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• pp.333-338
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• 2001

Fractal geometry is a non-Euclidean geometry which has been developed to quantitative analysis irregular or fractional shapes. Fractal dimension of irregular surface has fractal values ranging from 2 to 3 and of irregular line profile has fractal values ranging from 1 to 2. In this paper, quantitative analysis of crack growth patterns during the fracture processing of fiber-reinforced cement composites based on fractal geometry. The fracture behaviors of fiber reinforced mortar beams subjected to three-point loading in flexure. The beams all had a single notch depth, but varing volume fractions of polypropylene, cellulose fibers. The crack growth behaviors, as observed through the image processing system, and the box counting method was used to determine the fractal dimension, Df. The results showed that the linear correlation exists between fractal dimension and fracture energy of the fiber reinforced cement mortar.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.30 no.1A
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• pp.53-59
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• 2010

Recently, NDTs (Non-Destructive Techniques) using infrared camera are widely studied for detection of damage and void in RC (reinforced concrete) structures and they are also considered as an effective techniques for maintenance of infrastructures. The temperature on concrete surface depends on material and thermal properties such as specific heat, thermal conductivity, and thermal diffusion coefficient. Different porosity on cement mortar due to different mixture proportions can show different heat behavior in cooling stage. The porosity can affect physical and durability properties like strength and chloride diffusion coefficient as well. In this paper, active thermography which uses flash for heat induction is utilized and thermal characteristics on surface are evaluated. Samples of cement mortar with W/C (water to cement ratio) of 0.55 and 0.65 are prepared and physical properties like porosity, compressive strength, and chloride diffusion coefficient are evaluated. Then infrared thermography technique is carried out in a constant room condition (temperature $20{\sim}22^{\circ}C$ and relative humidity 55-60%). The mortar samples with higher porosity shows higher residual temperature at the cooling stage and also shows reduced critical time which shows constant temperature due to back wall effect. Furthermore, simple equation for critical time of back wall effect is suggested with porosity and experimental constants. These characteristics indicate the applicability of infrared thermography as an NDT for quality assessment of cement based composite like concrete. Physical properties and thermal behavior in cement mortar with different porosity are analyzed in discussed in this paper.

• Journal of the Korean Wood Science and Technology
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• v.37 no.6
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• pp.537-545
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• 2009

The objective of this study was to investigate potential usage of environmentally friendly building materials, liquid mortar and dry cement mortar mixed with charcoal, based on the test of their physical and chemical properties. From the test results of physical and chemical properties of the liquid mortar mixed with charcoal, liquid mortar containing over 20% of charcoal, the consistency viscosity and the non-volatile content met a standard requirement. Drying time was delayed with increase in charcoal contents in the liquid mortar, however they were fully cured within 60 minutes in all treated levels. Other properties were acceptable at standard requirement. From the results, it was found that the proper charcoal addition level to the liquid mortar was 25%. In the results on dry cement, it was found that samples containing 5% of charcoal showed the maximum compressive strength, whereas samples containing over 20% of charcoal did not reach the minimum requirement of KS standard. Water retention ability constantly increased as the charcoal ratio increased. The conventional dry cement mortar adsorbed 59.5% of it, in the test of adsorption rate on ammonia gas, whereas cement mortar containing 10% of charcoal showed 71.6% of ammonia gas adsorption.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Building Construction
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• v.15 no.6
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• pp.553-559
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• 2015

In this study, to suggest the application method of recycled fine aggregate, the non-cement mortar was prepared and studied with the binders of blast furnace slag, fly ash, and fly ash from combined heat power plant. As a basic experiment, a series of tests was conducted to determine the potions of the binders and types of activator. When the binder was consisted with 20% of fly ash and 40% of fly ash from combined heat power plant, the highest strength of the mortar was obtained, and as an activator, the combination of sodium hydroxide 2.5%, and calcium hydroxide 7.5% showed the highest strength of the mortar. Therefore, this study focuses on engineering properties of mortar contains fly ash from combined heat power plant and recycled fine aggregate according to replacement ratio of recycled fine aggregate based on the optimum mix from the basic experiment. As a result, the best replacement ratio of recycled fine aggregate is 75%.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Building Construction
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.216-222
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• 2014

Chloride attack to reinforced concrete structures located in seaside can cause a serious problem of durability and maintenance during the service life. Corrosion of reinforced steel bars in concrete decreases the bond strength and finally causes the detachment of concrete cover. Polymer cement mortar is usually adopted to repair the deteriorated RC structures because of its strong bonding property. The recovered load-carrying capacity after the repair was simulated by non-linear FEM analysis. The properties of concrete, repairing materials, bonding materials and reinforced bar were used as input data. Four types of redispersible polymer powders were used as components of polymer cement mortar. Pull-off tests were carried out to examine the bond properties such as rigidity and strength. Effects of a corrosion inhibitor and the loss of reinforced bars due to the corrosion were also considered in this study. FEM modeling and analysis were conducted to propose the universal model. Physical bonding in the relationship between repair materials and steel reinforced bar is more dominant than chemical bonding.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.16 no.6
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• pp.919-932
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• 2015

This paper presents a new method for assessing the three-point-bending (3PB) strength of mortar beams in a non-destructive manner, based on neural network (NN) models. The models are based on the radial basis function (RBF) architecture and the fuzzy means algorithm is employed for training, in order to boost the prediction accuracy. Data for training the models were collected based on a series of experiments, where the cement mortar beams were subjected to various bending mechanical loads and the resulting pressure stimulated currents (PSCs) were recorded. The input variables to the NN models were then calculated by describing the PSC relaxation process through a generalization of Boltzmannn-Gibbs statistical physics, known as non-extensive statistical physics (NESP). The NN predictions were evaluated using k-fold cross-validation and new data that were kept independent from training; it can be seen that the proposed method can successfully form the basis of a non-destructive tool for assessing the bending strength. A comparison with a different NN architecture confirms the superiority of the proposed approach.