ABSTRACT
Compared to other construction materials such as ceramics, metals, and polymers, cement and concrete materials are lower in cost, richer in raw materials, and easier to mass-produce and can serve as structural materials. Cement and concrete materials therefore become the most ubiquitous and widely used ones in the world. However, they are quasibrittle and susceptible to cracking and have no functional properties in general (Aitcin 2000). Since nanotechnology was introduced by R.P. Feynman in 1959, its application in construction to reinforce/modify cement and concrete materials has emerged as one of the most potential and active elds because of its excellent reinforcing/ modifying effect to performances of polymer-based materials (Coleman et al. 2006; Sanchez and Sobolev 2010; Zhu et al. 2004).
