Graphene Oxide–Pretreated Waste Medical Mask Microfiber-Reinforced Cement Composites: Frost Damage Modeling and Chloride Migration
Publication: Journal of Materials in Civil Engineering
Volume 36, Issue 1
Abstract
Proper disposal of waste medical masks has become increasingly urgent in order to protect the ecosystem. Our exploratory study has proven the feasibility of producing waste mask microfibers (WMMF) and pretreating them with graphene oxide (GO) to enhance the strengths of cement composites. This study further explored the resistance of designed WMMF/GO-WMMF mortar ( of 0.40) to chloride migration and frost damage, to address the knowledge gap related to durability. The GO-pretreated WMMF improved the chloride migration resistance (by ) and the freeze–thaw resistance (by ), likely due to the tortuosity-increasing, hydration-accelerating, and hydrates-regulating roles of GO in the cementitious material. The microscopic investigation, including backscatter electron imaging, scanning electron microscopy, and thermogravimetric analysis, shed light on the mechanistic roles of GO and WMMF in cement composites. In addition, the two-parameter Weibull distribution was employed to model the frost damage and compare the remaining capacity of freeze–thaw resistance of the three designed mortar samples at the same reliability level; the Bayesian method was also utilized to model the uncertainty during the cyclic freeze–thaw process.
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Data Availability Statement
Some or all data, models, or code that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
Acknowledgments
The authors acknowledge the support of their time by the US Department of Transportation through the National University Transportation Center TriDurLE (Grant No. 69A3551947137) and the technical support of Dr. Jing Zhong at Harbin Institute of Technology in the fabrication of the graphene oxide.
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Published In
Journal of Materials in Civil Engineering
Volume 36 • Issue 1 • January 2024
Copyright
© 2023 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Jan 30, 2023
Accepted: Jun 12, 2023
Published online: Oct 25, 2023
Published in print: Jan 1, 2024
Discussion open until: Mar 25, 2024
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