ABSTRACT
In this chapter, chemical and physical characteristics of miner al admixture are described. It should be noted that, in general, differences in the chemical composition do not have any sig nificant effect on the properties of mineral admixtures unless accompanied by significant mineralogical changes which, of course, also depend on the conditions of processing or forma tion. For instance, rapid cooling of a molten slag from high temperature produces more glassy phase, and therefore a more reactive material; the same slag when cooled slowly would es sentially form crystalline solid phases with little or no reactiv ity. As discussed in Chapter 4, it is not so much the chemical composition but the mineralogical and granulometric charac teristics, which determine how a mineral admixture would in fluence the important engineering properties of concrete, such as workability, strength, and impermeability. Therefore, in addition to the chemical composition, a brief review of the mineralogical and granulometric properties of various mineral admixtures is presented here.
