Effects of the Water/Cement Ratio on the Properties of 3-3 Type Cement-Based Piezoelectric Composites

• Published in: Materials Vol. 15; no. 8; p. 2760
• Main Authors: Wang, Jian-Hong, Sun, Hao-Xin, Dong, Ying-Ge, Cheng, Zhi, Liu, Wei
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland MDPI AG 08.04.2022; MDPI
• Subjects: 3-3 type cement-based piezoelectric composites; Acoustics; Cement hydration; Cement paste; Ceramics; Civil engineering; Composite materials; Density; Dielectric properties; Electrical properties; electromechanical properties; Gelcasting; Lead zirconate titanates; microstructure; Monitoring systems; Morphology; Piezoelectricity; Portland cements; Rheology; Smart materials; Solid phases; Structural health monitoring; Viscosity; Water-cement ratio; electromechanical properties; microstructure; 3-3 type cement-based piezoelectric composites; electrical properties; water/cement ratio
• ISSN: 1996-1944; 1996-1944
• DOI: 10.3390/ma15082760

In this work, 3-3 type porous lead zirconate titanate (PZT) ceramics were fabricated by incorporating particle-stabilized foams using the gel-casting method. Then, Portland cement pastes with different water/cement ratios (w/c) were cast into the porous ceramics to produce cement-based piezoelectric (PZT-PC) composites. The effects of w/c on phase structure, microscopic morphology, and electrical properties were studied. The results showed that the amount of hydrated cement products and the density of the PZT-PC composites increased with the increase of w/c from 0.3 to 0.9 and then decreased till w/c achieved a value of 1.1. Correspondingly, the values of both and increased with the density of the PZT-PC composites, resulting in less defects and greater poling efficiency. When w/c was maintained at 0.9, the 3-3 type cement-based piezoelectric composites presented the greatest value of 40.14% and the lowest value of 6.98 MRayls, becoming suitable for applications in civil engineering for structural health monitoring.