ABSTRACT
Cement reacts with water and derives its strength by its hydrated products. This hydration is a complex process; it takes usually 20-25 days for 90% of the hydration to get completed. But the long term complete hydration, generally takes a long time to complete. In this paper, an attempt has been made to study both the short term and long term effects of optimized Nanomaterial additions in ordinary cement mortar of cement: sand =1:3 ratios with water added as per the standard consistency as stipulated in IS 4031(Part 6):1988.Nanomaterials viz. Nanosilica (nS), Carbon Nanotubes (CNT) and Nano Titanium Dioxide (n-TiO2) were added in various dosages which is expressed as % with respect to the weight of cement added and were casted in 70.7mm cubes and tested for its cube strength in the laboratory, at various ages of cement mortar like 7 days,28days,90days,180days and 365days respectively. Optimizations were obtained out after studying the test results; for nS the optimization was found to be 0.75%, CNT optimization was found to be 0.02% and n-TiO2 optimization was found to be 1% w.r.to cement wt at 28 days i.e. these specific dosages got the maximum compressive strength in the cube testing machine. However the long term results showed different results except for n-TiO2.
