Thermal stability of C-S-H phases and applicability of Richardson and Groves’ and Richardson C-(A)-S-H(I) models to synthetic C-S-H

Synthetic C-S-H samples prepared with bulk C/S ratios from 0.75 to 1.5 were analyzed by coupled TG/DSC/FTIR and in-situ XRD while heating, in order to correlate observed weight loss curves with the kinetics of evolved gases, and to investigate the transformations C-S-H → β-wollastonite → α-wollastonite. The temperature of the transformation to β-wollastonite increased with increasing C/S. The temperature for the transformation from β- to α-wollastonite meanwhile decreased with increasing C/S; indicating that excess CaO stabilized the α-polymorph. The transformation C-S-H → β-wollastonite was accompanied by the formation of α′_LC₂S for C/S > 1. In the case of C-S-H with C/S = 1.5, both β-C₂S and rankinite were formed and then decomposed before the transformation to β-wollastonite and α′_LC₂S. C-S-H with low C/S was found to be more stable upon heating. The chemical structural models of Richardson and Groves’ and Richardson C-A-S-H(I) were used to obtain the structural-chemical formulae.