Advances in Hydration, Microstructure, and Properties of Modern Cement and Concrete Composites
A special issue of Materials (ISSN 1996-1944). This special issue belongs to the section "Construction and Building Materials".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 20 November 2025 | Viewed by 614
Special Issue Editors
Interests: cement chemistry; microstructure; calcium silicate hydrate; shotcrete; cement-based functional materials
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Modern cement and concrete composites have evolved significantly in recent decades, driven by the urgent need for sustainable, durable, and high-performance construction materials. The complexity of these materials has increased dramatically due to the incorporation of diverse components such as chemical admixtures, mineral additives, and novel supplementary cementitious materials. These advancements have not only enhanced material performance but also introduced new challenges in understanding their hydration kinetics, microstructural evolution, and multi-scale structure–property relationships.
This Special Issue aims to highlight cutting-edge research focused on the fundamental mechanisms governing the hydration processes, microstructural development, and engineering properties of modern cementitious systems. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Multi-component interactions: Effects of chemical admixtures, nanomaterials, and mineral additives on hydration kinetics and phase assemblages.
- Microstructural characterization: Advanced experimental techniques for probing multi-scale microstructural features.
- Property enhancement: Solutions and mechanisms for property enhancement of cementitious materials (mechanical strength, durability, shrinkage, rheology, etc.).
- Modern design and simulation approaches: Designing of novel cement and concrete composites and computational modeling (e.g., phase-field, molecular dynamics, and machine learning) for predicting hydration behavior, microstructure formation, and performance optimization.
- Sustainability-driven innovations: Strategies for reducing carbon footprint, including low-clinker cements, alkali-activated systems, and carbon-capture technologies.
This Special Issue will provide a platform to disseminate foundational research that informs professionals on the topics of rational design, processing, and application of next-generation cement and concrete composites. We warmly welcome your contributions to advance the scientific understanding of modern cement-based materials.
Dr. Xin Liu
Dr. Mingqi Li
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
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Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 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
- hydration
- microstructure
- properties
- modellings
- material design
- low carbon
- modern cement and concrete
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