Cementitious properties of super-fine steel slag

In this study, a super-fine steel slag with. the specific surface area of 786 m(2)/kg was prepared by mechanical grinding. Its cementitious properties were investigated by comparing the results obtained from it with those obtained from ordinary steel slag, fly ash, and cement. The results show that the super-fine steel slag exhibits a much higher activity at early and middle ages but a lower activity at late ages than the ordinary steel slag. Though the specific surface area of the super-fine steel slag is much larger than that of cement, the activity of the super-fine steel slag is still obviously lower than that of cement. The super-fine steel slag replacement tends to weaken the cementitious properties of the composite binder. As compared to fly ash, the super-fine steel slag tends to make more contributions to the hardening of concrete at early ages but far less contributions. at late ages. Overall, it seems that it is uneconomical to produce super-fine steel slag by mechanical grinding. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.