Fractal and Fractional in Construction Materials

A special issue of Fractal and Fractional (ISSN 2504-3110). This special issue belongs to the section "Engineering".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 June 2025 | Viewed by 2510

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
School of Water Resources and Hydropower Engineering, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072, China
Interests: civil engineering; cement-based materials; non-destructive measurement; transportation property; microstructure and durability; fractal analysis; electrical property; cement; concrete; construction materials; microstructure
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Guest Editor
College of Materials Science and Engineering, Xi’an University of Architecture and Technology, Xi’an 710055, China
Interests: concrete durability and crack resistance; resource utilization of bulk solid waste; research on advanced cement-based materials and repair materials
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Construction materials, including concrete, cement mortar, asphalt, ferric metal, fiber-reinforced materials, bamboo, polymer, etc., have been widely used in civil engineering. In recent years, fractal theory has been widely adopted in many research fields, such as civil engineering and materials science to probe the origin of materials properties (such as rheology, permeability, diffusivity, and thermal transportation). Fractal geometry is a new branch of nonlinear science, proposed and fundamentally established in the 1970s, focusing on the irregularities as well as the haphazard phenomena and self-similarity in nature.

This Special Issue aims to collect the recent advances made in Fractal and Fractional in construction materials globally. The submitted manuscripts will be peer reviewed, and those accepted will be published in the open-access journal Fractal and Fractional. This issue will cover topics of interest that include, but are not limited to, the following topics:

  1. Fractal and fractional characterization of construction materials;
  2. Fractal and fractional combined with other theoretical, numerical, and/or experimental methods, in the evaluation of the mechanical performance of construction materials;
  3. Fractal approach to study the geotechnical engineering, cement-based materials, fiber-reinforced materials, rock and soil materials, geopolymer materials, asphalt and other materials for road pavements, and innovative sustainable materials;
  4. Fractal approach to study the properties such as transportation and durability, volume stability and mechanical properties, and cracks and fractures;
  5. Other fractal-based approaches used in construction materials.

Dr. Shengwen Tang
Dr. Lei Wang
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Fractal and Fractional is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • construction materials
  • fractal and fractional
  • mechanical performance
  • fractal theory
  • experiment
  • transportation
  • durability

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

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24 pages, 8517 KiB  
Article
Compression Damage Precursors of Silane-Protected Concrete Under Sulfate Erosion Based on Acoustic Emission Characterization
by Wanmao Zhang, Dunwen Liu, Yu Tang and Yinghua Jian
Fractal Fract. 2025, 9(4), 254; https://doi.org/10.3390/fractalfract9040254 - 17 Apr 2025
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Abstract
Concrete materials exposed to sulfate-rich geological environments are prone to structural durability degradation due to chemical erosion. Silane-based protective materials can enhance the durability of concrete structures under harsh environmental conditions. This study investigates the evolution of acoustic emission (AE) precursor characteristics in [...] Read more.
Concrete materials exposed to sulfate-rich geological environments are prone to structural durability degradation due to chemical erosion. Silane-based protective materials can enhance the durability of concrete structures under harsh environmental conditions. This study investigates the evolution of acoustic emission (AE) precursor characteristics in silane-protected, sulfate-eroded concrete specimens during uniaxial compression failure. Unlike existing research focused primarily on protective material properties, this work establishes a novel framework linking “silane treatment–AE parameters–failure precursor identification”, thereby bridging the research gap in damage evolution analysis of sulfate-eroded concrete under silane protection. Uniaxial compressive strength tests and AE monitoring were conducted on both silane-protected and unprotected sulfate-eroded concrete specimens. A diagnostic system integrating dynamic analysis of the acoustic emission b-value, mutation detection of energy concentration index ρ, and multifractal detrended fluctuation analysis (MF-DFA) was developed. The results demonstrate that silane-protected specimens exhibited a distinct b-value escalation followed by an abrupt decline prior to peak load, whereas unprotected specimens showed disordered fluctuations. The mutation point of energy concentration ρ for silane-protected specimens occurred at 0.83 σc, representing a 9.2% threshold elevation compared to 0.76 σc for unprotected specimens, confirming delayed damage accumulation in protected specimens. MF-DFA revealed narrowing spectrum width (α) in unprotected specimens, indicating reduced heterogeneity in AE signals, while protected specimens maintained significant multifractal divergence. fα peak localization revealed that weak AE signals dominated during early loading stages in both groups, with crack evolution primarily involving sliding and friction. During the mid-late elastic phase, crack propagation became the predominant failure mode. Experimental evidence confirms the engineering significance of silane protection in extending service life of concrete structures in sulfate environments. The proposed multi-parameter AE diagnostic methodology provides quantitative criteria for the safety monitoring of protected concrete structures in sulfate-rich conditions. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Fractal and Fractional in Construction Materials)
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Review

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45 pages, 10195 KiB  
Review
Fractal Analysis of Cement-Based Composite Microstructure and Its Application in Evaluation of Macroscopic Performance of Cement-Based Composites: A Review
by Peng Zhang, Junyao Ding, Jinjun Guo and Fei Wang
Fractal Fract. 2024, 8(6), 304; https://doi.org/10.3390/fractalfract8060304 - 21 May 2024
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 1506
Abstract
Cement-based composites’, as the most widely used building material, macroscopic performance significantly influences the safety of engineering structures. Meanwhile, the macroscopic properties of cement-based composites are tightly related to their microscopic structure. The complexity of cement-based composites’ microscopic structure is challenging to describe [...] Read more.
Cement-based composites’, as the most widely used building material, macroscopic performance significantly influences the safety of engineering structures. Meanwhile, the macroscopic properties of cement-based composites are tightly related to their microscopic structure. The complexity of cement-based composites’ microscopic structure is challenging to describe geometrically, so fractal theory is extensively applied to quantify the microscopic structure of cement-based composites. However, existing studies have not clearly defined the quantification methods for various microscopic structures in CCs, nor have they provided a comprehensive evaluation of the correlation between the fractal dimensions of different microscopic structures and macroscopic performance. So, this study categorizes the commonly used testing methods in fractal theory into three categories: particle distribution (laser granulometry, etc.), pore structure (mercury intrusion porosity, etc.), and fracture (computed tomography, etc.). It systematically establishes a detailed process for the application of testing methods, the processing of test results, model building, and fractal dimension calculation. The applicability of different fractal dimension calculation models and the range of the same fractal dimension established by different models are compared and discussed, and the advantages and disadvantages of different models are analyzed. Finally, the research delves into an in-depth analysis of the relationship between the fractal dimension of cement-based composites’ microscopic structure and its macroscopic properties, such as compressive strength, corrosion resistance, impermeability, and high-temperature resistance. The principle that affects the positive and negative correlation between fractal dimension and macroscopic performance is discussed and revealed in this study. The comprehensive review in this paper provides scholars with methods and models for quantitative research on the microscopic structural parameters of cement-based composites and offers a pathway for the non-destructive assessment of the macroscopic performance of cement-based composites. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Fractal and Fractional in Construction Materials)
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