Prediction of compressive strength up to 28 days from microstructure of Portland cement

The influence of the characteristics or the microstructure of Portland cement on compressive strength up to 28 days has been statistically investigated by application of partial least square (PLS) analysis. The main groups of characteristics were mineralogy and superficial microstructure represented by curves from X-ray diffraction analysis and differential thermogravimetric analysis, as well as particle size distributions. PLS gave maximum explained variance in compressive strength at 1, 2, 7 and 28 days of 93%, 90%, 79% and 67%, respectively. The high explained variance makes the prediction of the compressive strength up to 28 days from the characteristics reliable. The prediction ability makes it possible in this case to predict strength from cement characteristics and vice versa. Such a prediction can be utilized to design a cement to achieve target strength performance.