Micrometer-scale 3-D shape characterization of eight cements: Particle shape and cement chemistry, and the effect of particle shape on laser diffraction particle size measurement

Eight different portland cements were imaged on a synchrotron beam line at Brookhaven National Laboratory using X-ray microcomputed tomography at a voxel size of about 1 µm per cubic voxel edge. The particles ranged in size roughly between 10 µm and 100 µm. The shape and size of individual particles were computationally analyzed using spherical harmonic analysis. The particle shape difference between cements was small but significant, as judged by several different quantitative shape measures, including the particle length, width, and thickness distributions. It was found that the average shape of cement particles was closely correlated with the volume fraction of C 3S (alite) and C 2S (belite) making up the cement powder. It is shown that the non-spherical particle shape of the cements strongly influence laser diffraction results, at least in the sieve size range of 20 µm to 38 µm. Since laser diffraction particle size measurement is being increasingly used by the cement industry, while cement chemistry is always a main factor in cement production, these results could have important implications for how this kind of particle size measurement should be understood and used in the cement industry.