Construction and Building Materials 52 (2014) 130–136

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Construction and Building Materials

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/conbuildmat

Aerogel-incorporated concrete: An experimental study

Tao Gao a,⇑, Bjørn Petter Jelle b,c, Arild Gustavsen a, Stefan Jacobsen d
a
Department of Architectural Design, History and Technology, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Trondheim, Norway
b
Department of Materials and Structures, SINTEF Building and Infrastructure, Trondheim, Norway
c
Department of Civil and Transport Engineering, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Trondheim, Norway
d
Department of Structural Engineering, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Trondheim, Norway

h i g h l i g h t s

 Replacing the natural aggregate with aerogel granules results in a lightweight and thermal insulating concrete.
 The properties of aerogel incorporated concrete can be modified by changing the aerogel content.
 Aerogel particles are stable during the hydration of cementitious materials.

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Lightweight concrete can be prepared by replacing the normal aggregate of concrete, either partly or
Received 21 August 2013 totally, with lightweight materials. In this work, by incorporating silica aerogel particles into concrete
Received in revised form 30 October 2013 matrix, we have successfully prepared a lightweight and thermal insulating concrete material, aerogel-
Accepted 31 October 2013
incorporated concrete (AIC) [The term ‘‘aerogel-incorporated concrete (AIC)’’ is used in this work to
Available online 1 December 2013
describe a mortar or cement based material containing aerogel particles.], with a density of 1.0 g/
cm3, a thermal conductivity of 0.26 W/mK, and a compressive strength of 8.3 MPa at an aerogel con-
Keywords:
tent of 60 vol.%. Moreover, the density, thermal conductivity, and the mechanical properties of AIC can be
Aerogel
Concrete
controlled by varying the aerogel content. Scanning electron microscopy observations reveal that the
Thermal insulation aerogel particles are stable during the hydration of cementitious materials, suggesting possibilities of
Stability combining aerogel and concrete materials for construction applications.
Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Lightweight concrete has many important applications in mod-
ern construction and buildings due to its advantages such as higher
strength/weight ratio and superior heat and sound insulation char-
acteristics [1,2]. Lightweight concrete can be prepared, among oth-
ers, by replacing the normal aggregate (i.e. sand and rock), either
partly or totally, with lightweight aggregates such as pumice, diat-
omite, volcanic cinders, and perlite [3]. Since the introduction of
lightweight aggregates into concrete introduces also possible
interactions between the aggregates and the binder phase, depend-
ing on the nature of the aggregates employed, an intelligent design
and selection of aggregates is obviously important for lightweight
concrete for different applications.
Lightweight concrete usually possesses superior thermal insula-
tion properties compared to conventional concrete due to the large
amount of air void in the concrete matrix and/or in the lightweight
aggregates [1]. This feature is especially relevant with regard to the
energy efficient buildings, where achieving both the thermal insu-
⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +47 99895405.
E-mail address: tao.gao@ntnu.no (T. Gao).
lation and the load-bearing feature with a unique material is very
attractive [4]. For concrete, a low thermal conductivity requires in
general the presence of voids within concrete, whereas for a high
mechanical strength solid instead of void is needed. To meet this
contradictory requirement, the application of thermal insulating
aggregates with good mechanical strength is required to achieve
lightweight and thermal insulating concrete. For example, ex-
panded polystyrene (EPS), a low density (50 kg/m3) foam consist-
ing of discrete air voids in a polymer matrix, has been widely
studied for lightweight concrete [5–7]. So far, EPS concrete is com-
mercially available with typically density of 95–750 kg/m3, com-
pressive strength of 2.9–5.8 MPa, and thermal conductivity of
0.23–0.26 W/mK, depending on dosage of the EPS materials [8].
It is worthwhile to note that mechanical properties of the EPS con-
crete are not satisfactory for many structural applications; more-
over, the EPS concrete may suffer from its lack of fire-resistance.
In this regard, other inorganic based lightweight materials with
low thermal conductivity such as aerogel represent interesting
alternatives [9,10].
Aerogel is a nanoporous material, typically made of silica, with
94–99% of the volume being air voids, resulting in extremely low
density (3–100 kg/m3 depending on the porosity), low thermal

0950-0618/$ - see front matter Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.conbuildmat.2013.10.100
 T. Gao et al. / Construction and Building Materials 52 (2014) 130–136 131

conductivity (0.003–0.02 W/mK, compared to 0.026 and 0.033 W/
mK of air and EPS, respectively [11]), and good fire and acoustic
resistance [12,13]. These characteristics make aerogel a perfect
aggregate for lightweight and thermal insulating concrete. How-
ever, the application of aerogel in thermal insulating concrete
has not been widely studied [9,10], probably due to the high man-
ufacture cost of aerogel [14]. Ratke reported previously an aerogel
concrete with interesting fire and sound resistance [9]. Kim et al.
reported recently the insulation performance of aerogel cement
prepared by mixing aerogel powder, methanol, and cement paste;
thermal conductivity of aerogel cement with aerogel mass fraction
of 2.0 wt.% was found to be decreased by maximum 75% of aerogel-
free cement [10]. It is worth noting that, however, the use of meth-
anol for construction purpose should be avoided in practice.
It is of fundamental interest to study aerogel-incorporated con-
crete (AIC) or cement based materials, where some interesting and
useful properties may be achieved [9,10]. For example, the stabil-
ity/durability of aerogel particles in concrete is worth studying
since the alkaline environment during the hydration of cementi-
tious materials may destroy aerogel (i.e., amorphous silica)
through reactions analogous to the well known alkali-silica reac-
tion (ASR) [15,16]. Obviously, the results obtained would be very
helpful for the applications of aerogel materials in building sector.
In this paper, we report an experimental study on lightweight and
thermal insulating AIC; the correlation between aerogel content
and the density, thermal and mechanical properties of AIC samples
are discussed. We hope the AIC reported here may stimulate more
research on both thermal insulating concrete and aerogel materials
for construction applications.
2. Experimental procedures
2.1. Materials and specimens
AIC samples were prepared in a standard Hobart 2-litre mixer by adding ce-
ment, sand, silica fume, water, superplasticizer, and aerogel particles. The cement
used in this study was a CEM I 52.5R (particle density: 3140 kg/m3) from Norcem
AS Brevik, Norway; compositional details are reported in Table 1. Silica fume (Elkem
Table 1
Chemical composition of CEM I 52.5 R.
Component Percentage (wt.%)
CaO 64.16
SiO2 20.37
Al2O3 4.58
SO3 3.84
CaCO3 3.8
Fe2O3 3.56
MgO 2.26
K2O 0.47
Na2O 0.40
P2O5 0.19
Cl 0.038
LOI 2.14
Microsilica Grade 940, particle density: 2200 kg/m3) was added to modify the
properties of cement. Superplasticizer (Dynamon SP130), a modified acrylic poly-
mer solution for precast concrete from Rescon Mapei, Norway, was added during
the stirring stage to increase cohesion and homogeneity of the concrete mixture.
A natural sand from Finland (particle density: 2600 kg/m3) was selected by using
sieve with size of 0.5–2 mm. Hydrophobic aerogel granules (ISOGEL 800, particle
density: 100 kg/m3) were received from PCAS, France, with typical sizes of about
2–4 mm. Distilled water was used throughout the experiment.
The water–binder (w/b) ratio used in this work was set as 0.4; the binder con-
tent was taken as the sum of cement and silica fume, where the amount of silica
fume was 10.8 wt.% of the binder phase. The dosage of SP130 was 1 wt.% of the bin-
der phase. The volume of aggregates (sand + aerogel) was 60 vol.% of the concrete
sample. The air void was set as 2 vol.% for all samples. Details of the sample prep-
aration are reported in Table 2.
Due to the lightweight and the hydrophobic nature of aerogel, a dry mixing pro-
cess involving cement, silica fume, sand, and aerogel particles was applied first.
Then, water was added slowly to obtain a uniform mixture with all aerogel particles
having uniform coating of cementitious slurry. The superplasticizer SP130 was also
added at this step to obtain a well-mixed paste. During the mixing, the fracture of
some large aerogel particles was noticeable, especially with the presence of sand.
The well-mixed slurry was poured into in a stainless steel prism shaped mold
(40 mm  40 mm  160 mm); an electric vibrator was employed for a short period
(3 s) to ensure good compaction as well as to avoid separation. The samples were
kept sealed in their steel moulds at a water vapor saturated environment at room
temperature for 24 h and then de-molded. Subsequently, the samples were main-
tained in the same water vapor saturated environment for 28 days. For each com-
position, three identical samples were obtained and thereafter characterized.
2.2. Characterization
Thermal conductivity of cured AIC samples was analyzed by using a Hotdisk
Thermal Constants Analyzer (Model TPS 2500S). A transient plane source technique
was applied [17,18] and a disk-type Kapton Sensor 5465 with radius 3.189 mm was
used. The sensor, which acts both as heat source and temperature recorder, was
sandwiched between the two pieces of samples. The measurements were made
by applying a heating power of 0.315 W for 20 s. The temperature increase of the
samples as a function of time was recorded to compute the thermal conductivity
of the samples. The AIC samples were measured immediately after the curing pro-
cess to minimize the effects of hydration or moisture content on thermal conductiv-
ities [18]. Different measurement configurations were employed and the reported
data were the arithmetic mean of nine individual results.
Mechanical properties of cured AIC samples were analyzed according to UNI-EN
standard [19]. The flexural tensile strength of prism (40 mm  40 mm  160 mm)
was recorded by three–point bend test method with span of 100 mm and load
speed of (50 ± 10) N/s. The final flexural tensile strength was the arithmetic mean
of the three individual results. After the bend test, the obtained two fragments were
subjected to compressive strength test with contacting surface of 40 mm  40 mm.
The load was applied vertically to the sample at a rate of (2400 ± 200) N/s. The final
compressive strength was the arithmetic mean of the six individual results.
After the mechanical property test, the resulting small pieces with suitable sizes
were collected and used for morphology characterization on a Zeiss Supra 55VP
field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM). An amorphous carbon coat-
ing was applied on the surface of the samples before the SEM observation.
3. Results and discussion
3.1. Aerogel particles
The commercially available aerogel granules are usually several
millimeters in size and are irregular in shapes, as shown in Fig. 1a.

Table 2
Mix proportions of the AIC (40 mm  40 mm  160 mm) (g).

Sample Water Cement Silica fume SP130a Sandb Aerogel Aerogel fraction
(vol.%) (wt.%)
2Ref 49.76 117.75 14.3 1.32 405.37 0 0 0
2A10 50.10 117.75 14.3 1.32 337.94 3.07 10 0.59
2A20 50.43 117.75 14.3 1.32 270.60 6.14 20 1.33
2A30 50.76 117.75 14.3 1.32 203.10 9.21 30 2.32
2A40 51.10 117.75 14.3 1.32 135.67 12.28 40 3.70
2A50 51.43 117.75 14.3 1.32 68.25 15.36 50 5.72
2A60 51.76 117.75 14.3 1.32 0 18.47 60 9.07
a
Water content 70 wt.%.
b
Water content 0.5 wt.%.
132 T. Gao et al. / Construction and Building Materials 52 (2014) 130–136
Fig. 1. (a) Optical photography and (b) SEM image of aerogel particle. Panel (c)
shows schematically the arrangement manner of silica nanoparticle.
Scanning electron microscopy analysis (Fig. 1b) indicates that large
aerogel particles are actually aggregations of small nanoparticles,
which consist of large voids (mesoporous, 50 nm in diameter)
in a so-called ‘‘pearl-necklace’’ network of microporous, secondary
particles with diameters of about 5–10 nm [12,13], as illustrating
schematically in Fig. 1c.
Aerogel is characterized by low density and high porosity,
where the density qaerogel is correlated to the porosity / – the vol-
ume ratio of the empty spaces within the solid silica matrix:
qaerogel ¼ qSiO2  /  ðqSiO2  qair Þ ð0 < / < 1Þ:
By giving the density of compact silica qSiO2 and air qair, which is
about 2196 kg/m3 and 1.2 kg/m3, respectively [11], one can calcu-
late that aerogel with a density of 100 kg/m3 may consist of about
95.5% empty spaces. The low density and high porosity of aerogel
bring about many important properties [12–14]; among these, the
superior thermal insulation property represents one the most
attractive features of aerogel materials. An effective total thermal
conductivity keff of aerogel at a given temperature T can be ex-
pressed as the sum of the solid thermal conductivity of the solid
backbone ks , the effective thermal conductivity of the gaseous phase
kg that is also related to pressure P, and the radiative conductivity kr
(can be neglected at room temperature) [20]:
keff ðTÞ ¼ ks ðTÞ þ kg ðT; Pg Þ þ kr ðTÞ: ð2Þ
In aerogel, the thermal conductivity of the solid backbones, ks , is de-
creased due to the presence of small silica primary nanoparticles
(e.g. Fig. 1c) with reduced thermal conductivity [21]. Moreover,
the mesoporous structure with effective pore sizes of a few tens
of nanometers can suppress the heat transfer via the gaseous phase
due to the Knudsen effect [22]. Though it is complicated to calculate
the theoretical thermal conductivity of aerogel, many experimen-
tally derived values under various conditions are so far available
[20]. Normally, the material has a thermal conductivity of about
0.010–0.020 W/mK depending on preparation conditions [12–14].
In this work, the applied aerogel granules have a measured thermal
conductivity of about 0.020 W/mK.
Aerogel materials are usually treated with hydrophobic surface,
especially when used as thermal insulation materials [14]. The
hydrophobic nature of aerogel is helpful for preventing water
absorption since water has a relatively high thermal conductivity,
0.6 W/mK, compared to air, 0.026 W/mK [11]. In this work, the
aerogel particles were incorporated into concrete, where a signifi-
cant amount of free water exists. Therefore, the hydrophobic nat-
ure of aerogel particles is essential not only to keep their thermal
insulation properties but also to avoid water absorption that will
change the volumetric composition and water-to-binder ratio of
the concrete matrix.
3.2. Stability of aerogel particles in concrete
Aerogel particles can be mixed fairly well with cement before
and after adding water, which is different from the previous report
by Kim et al., where a pretreatment of aerogel particles with meth-
anol is required [10]. Fig. 2a shows an image of a trial sample made
by mixing cement, water and aerogel particles, demonstrating
clearly well dispersed aerogel granules within the cement matrix.
Some large aerogel particles might be broken during the mixing
process due to the low mechanical strength of the material [23],
though it is difficult to distinguish the broken particles from the
original, small ones (Fig. 1a). Fig. 2b displays the cured sample after
mechanical test, revealing clearly that aerogel particles survive
from the mixing and curing process and are not destroyed by the
alkaline environment due to the hydration process of cementitious
materials.
It is well documented that amorphous silica can react with
cementitious materials with the presence of water, through reac-
tions similar to the alkali–silica reaction (ASR) [15,16]. Usually,
ASR takes place between the silica contained in aggregates (e.g.
sand) and hydroxide ions from the cement paste, which results
in usually hydrated silicate gels with different compositions, along
with osmotic pressure generated by the volume swelling. As the
pressure builds up and exceeds the tensile strength of the sur-
rounding materials, cracks will occur. These local defects affect
ð1Þ greatly on the properties of concrete.
Fig. 3 shows the SEM images of the plain sample without aero-
gel particles, showing clearly the existence of air voids and some
large spherical particles with surface cracks. The compositional
analysis indicates these spherical particles are mainly silica/sili-
cates. The particles are very large in size compared to individual
silica fume particles, suggesting that they were probably ill-dis-
persed silica fume lumps that will act as alkali-sink in the instant
ASR reaction. Fig. 3b displays an individual particle with a cracked
outer shell, demonstrating clearly the reactivity of silica in con-
crete to watery gels with drying shrinkage cracks at the interface.
 T. Gao et al. / Construction and Building Materials 52 (2014) 130–136 133

Fig. 2. Optical photography of AIC sample. In panel (a) the sample is made of cement, aerogel particles and water; surface area of the sample is scratched to show the inner
part. The aerogel particles are slightly blue in color due to the scattering of light. Panel (b) shows the cured AIC sample after mechanical test, where A denotes aerogel
particles. (For interpretation of the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)

Fig. 3. SEM images of reference plain concrete, showing clearly the reactivity of
silica particles. Panel b shows an enlargement of one spherical particle. Fig. 4. SEM images of AIC sample, where A denotes aerogel particles.

It is interesting to point out that aerogel particles are found to
be fairly stable during the hydration of cementitious materials.
For example, Fig. 4a shows a SEM image of the AIC sample, 2A60,
where the irregular-shaped aerogel particles can be seen clearly.
Moreover, the surface of the aerogel particles is usually smooth
and clean, indicating that there is probably no degradation related
to aerogel during the hydration of cement paste. It is also found
that aerogel particles are usually separated from the surrounding
concrete materials by a distance of several microns, Fig. 4b. It is
probably due to the volume shrinkage of cement paste during
the hydration process [16]. The gap between aerogel particles
and surrounding cement paste may serve as capillaries where air
and/or water can be transported or condensed.
The superior stability of aerogel compared to silica fume is
noticeable, though the details are not very clear at this stage. That
aerogel particles are chemically inert in concrete is probably re-
lated to its hydrophobic nature, which repulses aqueous solution
and consequently hinders the reaction between aerogel and sur-
rounding cement paste. Moreover, as shown in Fig. 5, the surface
region of the aerogel particles may react with surrounding cement
paste and the produced silicates can therefore act as protection
layers to block the further reactions. It is also found that the ce-
ment paste in the AIC samples has less air voids than those of
the reference sample, indicating that the presence of aerogel parti-
cles may affect the air entrainment of the surrounding cementi-
tious materials, perhaps by gas or liquid diffusion due to the
porous nature and the large surface area of aerogel particles
(600–1000 m2/g). Moreover, the absorbed CO2 in aerogel particles
would react with Ca(OH)2 from the binder phase to form CaCO3
during the curing process, which changes also the hydration
134 T. Gao et al. / Construction and Building Materials 52 (2014) 130–136
Fig. 5. Optical images of AIC sample (2A60), compared to the plain concrete sample
(2Ref). The open rectangles indicate the presence of aerogel particles. The area
marked with open circles shows the aerogel particle-concrete matrix interface,
where the white appearance is due to CaCO3. Arrows in 2Ref show the air voids.
process and consequently the microstructure of the surrounding
cementitious materials. A detailed study in this area is obviously
interesting and worth pursuing.
3.3. Properties of AIC
Aerogel is a light-weight solid (density: 100 kg/m3), therefore
replacing normal aggregates (i.e. sand with density of 2600 kg/
m3) in the plain concrete by aerogel particles results in a light-
weight concrete. Fig. 6 shows, for example, as the aerogel content
increases, the resulting concrete shows decreasing density. At
highest aerogel content in this study, the AIC sample 2A60, shows
a measured density of about 1000 kg/m3, compared to 1980 kg/m3
of the reference plain concrete sample. Fig. 6 shows also that the
measured densities of AIC are slightly larger than their theoretical
values, which can be due to several reasons: water absorption by
aerogel particles, reaction of aerogel with hydroxides, breaking of
aerogel particles during the mixing process, etc. Since the water
absorption by aerogel particles is not very likely due to its hydro-
phobic nature, and the reaction of aerogel with hydroxides is not
significant (Figs. 4 and 5), the density changes may indicate that
the presence of porous aerogel particles can change the air void
content of the concrete matrix, as shown in Fig. 5. Moreover, at
the present experimental condition, the binder phase has actually
a higher air void content than the assumed 2 vol.%, which explains
the difference on measured and calculated densities of the refer-
ence plain concrete.
2500
calculated
measured
2000
Density (kg/m )
3
1500
1000
500
0 20 40 60
Aerogel content (vol%)
Fig. 6. Density of AIC samples. Both theoretical and measured densities are given
for comparison.
Aerogel has low thermal conductivity of about 0.01–0.02 W/mK
[12,20]. It is apparent that the incorporation of aerogel particles to
concrete will result in a thermal insulating composite since the
thermal conduction through the solid phase dominates the ther-
mal conductivity of concrete materials [18]. As reported in Fig. 7,
the AIC samples show decreased thermal conductivity along with
the increase of aerogel content, similar to that reported previously
by Kim et al. [10]. For example, the reference plain concrete exhib-
its a thermal conductivity of about 1.86 W/mK; whereas the AIC
sample with the aerogel content of 60 vol.% shows a low thermal
conductivity of about 0.26 W/mK, i.e. about 86% decrease in ther-
mal conductivity of the aerogel-free sample. The recent synthesis
reveals that it is possible to reduce further the thermal conductiv-
ity of AIC by increasing the aerogel content; however, the mechan-
ical strength decreases also. In this regard, a balance between the
thermal performance and the mechanical strength of AIC has to
be considered for their potential applications; the increased man-
ufacture cost related to the use of aerogel granules should also
be considered (see Appendix Fig. A and Table A).
A simple and reliable composite model would be of great help
in the further development of AIC or other thermal insulating
materials. In Fig. 7 we have also calculated the thermal conductiv-
ities of AIC, kAIC , according to a two-phase mixture model [24], by
assuming regular arrangements of the two components, i.e. con-
crete matrix and aerogel granules:
"
1
kAIC ¼ ð3xA  1ÞkA þ ð3xC  1ÞkC
4
qffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi #
þ ðð3xA  1ÞkA þ ð3xC  1ÞkC Þ2 þ 8kA kC ; ð3Þ
where kA and kC are the thermal conductivity of aerogel and con-
crete matrix, which are 0.020 W/mK and 1.86 W/mK, respectively;
xA and xC are the volume fraction of aerogel and concrete matrix,
respectively. The fitting in general is acceptable except for an abnor-
mal value for the AIC sample with 10 vol.% aerogel. Moreover, it
must be pointed out that the concrete matrix is not ‘‘homogeneous’’
since the volume ratio of paste/sand and possibly air void content
change also with the content of aerogel (see Table 2), which may
cause some errors during the fitting. A further characterization on
AIC samples consisting of only cement paste and aerogel particles
is under way, where this two-phase model (i.e. Eq. (3)) may be
optimized.
Fig. 8 reports the mechanical strength of AIC, showing clearly a
tendency that the strength decreases with the increase of aerogel
content. This is similar to that observed for EPS concrete [6,7]
2.4
Thermal conductivity (W/mK)
1.8
1.2
0.6
0.0
0 20 40 60 80 100
Aerogel content (vol%)
Fig. 7. Thermal conductivity of AIC. Dashed line represents the calculated values.
 T. Gao et al. / Construction and Building Materials 52 (2014) 130–136 135

80 8 properties of AIC behave differently from the other concrete mate-

rials, though they are more analogous to the EPS concrete [27,28]

Flexural tensile strength (MPa)

Compressive strength (MPa)

than the normal concrete materials [25,26], indicating the similarity

60 6 between EPS beads and aerogel granules as lightweight aggregates.
However, it should be pointed out that aerogel granules are brittle
whereas EPS beads are rather plastic in nature, which may account
40 4 for the difference on the mechanical properties of AIC and EPS
concrete.
As discussed above (Figs. 6–8), the density, thermal conductiv-
20 2 ity and mechanical strength of AIC decrease with increasing aero-
compressive strength
gel content, indicating that the properties of AIC may be tailored by
flexural tensile strength
varying material parameters. Fig. 10 reports the thermal and
0 0
0 20 40 60 mechanical properties of AIC against its density. It is interesting
that there exists a similar numerical relation between the thermal
Aerogel content (vol%)
conductivity (kAIC)-density (q) and the compressive strength (fc)-
Fig. 8. Compressive and flexural tensile strength of AIC. density of AIC:

and aerogel concrete [9,10]. It is also seen that the failure mode of kAIC ¼ 0:038e0:0019q ; ð6Þ
AIC under compression appears more gradual with the increase of and
the aerogel contents, which is clearly different from the typical
brittle failure of the reference plain concrete. In this work, at the fc ¼ 0:57e0:0023q : ð7Þ
highest aerogel content, 60 vol.%, the AIC sample shows a typical
compressive strength of about 8.3 MPa and a flexural tensile It indicates that the density may represent an intrinsic parameter to
strength of 1.2 MPa, respectively. characterize the properties of AIC. Note that the flexural tensile
Fig. 9 represents the variation of flexural tensile strength (ft) strength of AIC does not follow the same numerical relation with
plotted against compressive strength (fc). It can be seen that as the density, which is reasonable according to Eq. (5).
the flexural tensile strength of AIC increases, the compressive A comparison between the AIC reported in this work and the
strength is also increasing, which is similar as those observed for commercial available EPS concrete [8] indicates similar lightweight
other lightweight concrete materials [25–28]. Previous studies and thermal insulating properties (Table 3). Although the high
have indicated that the correlation between flexural tensile manufacture cost of aerogel materials at the moment represents
strength ft and compressive strength fc of concrete can be ex- the main obstacle for their applications in the building sector
pressed as (see Appendix Fig. A and Table A), by engineering/improving both
the aerogel granules and the concrete matrix, useful products can
ft ¼ A  fcB ; ð4Þ be obtained for specific building applications [9,29,30].
where A and B are constant and are probably also material-depen-
dent. For example, A and B are reported to be 0.2 and 0.7, respec- thermal conductivity
Thermal conductivity (W/mK)

Compressive strength (MPa)

tively, for normal concrete [25], whereas for lightweight concrete compressive strength 60
1.8
A and B are about 0.23 and 0.67, respectively [26]. Saradhi Babu
et al. have reported A = 0.358 and B = 0.675 for EPS concrete [27],
which are quite similar as those (A = 0.3826 and B = 0.6557) ob- 40
tained by Chen and Fang [28]. In this work, on the basis of the re- 1.2
sults from the AIC samples, the proposed Eq. (5) can be rewritten as

ft ¼ 0:277  fc0:795 : ð5Þ 20

0.6
One can also compare the mechanical properties of concrete mate-
rials with different aggregates by plotting Eq. (4) with different A
and B values, as shown in Fig. 9. Obviously, the mechanical 0
900 1200 1500 1800 2100
8
AIC experimental 3
Density (kg/m )
AIC calculated
Flexural tensile strength (MPa)

lightweight concrete, ref 24

lightweight concrete, ref 25 Fig. 10. Variation of thermal conductivity and compressive strength with density of
6 EPS concrete, ref 26 AIC. Dashed line is drawn to guide eyes according to y = A exp(B x) with parameters
EPS concrete, ref 27 as given by text.

4
Table 3
Properties of AIC and EPS concrete.

2 Parameter EPS concrete [8] AIC

Density (kg/m3) 750 1000
Thermal conductivity (W/mK) 0.26 0.26
Compressive strength (MPa) 5.8 8.3
0
Flexural tensile strength (MPa) – 1.2
10 20 30 40 50 60
Fire resistance Poor Good
Compressive strength (MPa) Manufacture cost a Low High
a
Fig. 9. Variation of flexural tensile strength with compressive strength of AIC. Estimated according to the market price of light weight aggregates, typically 1–
Simulated line spectra are shown for comparison. 5 EUR/kg for EPS beads and 40–160 EUR/kg for aerogel granules [31].
136 T. Gao et al. / Construction and Building Materials 52 (2014) 130–136
4. Conclusions
Lightweight and thermal insulating aerogel-incorporated con-
crete (AIC) have been prepared via a simple and scalable method.
A typical AIC sample shows a density of about 1.0 g/cm3, a thermal
conductivity of about 0.26 W/mK, and a compressive strength of
about 8.3 MPa at an aerogel content of 60 vol.%. Moreover, the den-
sity, thermal conductivity and mechanical strength of AIC decrease
with increasing aerogel content. The proposed equation for the
numerical relation between the thermal conductivity and the den-
sity of AIC is kAIC ¼ 0:038e0:0019q , which is analogous to that of the
compressive strength–density relationship fc ¼ 0:57e0:0023q .
The aerogel particles are stable during the hydration of cemen-
titious materials, indicating possibilities of combining aerogel and
cement/concrete materials for construction purpose. Further stud-
ies are still necessary to understand the detailed physical and/or
chemical processes of aerogel particles when contacting with
cementitious materials.
Acknowledgements
We thank Dr. Pierre Andre Marchal (PCAS, France) for providing
the aerogel materials and Prof. Harald Justnes (SINTEF Building and
Infrastructure, Trondheim, Norway) for helping with the manu-
script. This work has been supported by the Research Council of
Norway and several partners through the SINTEF and NTNU re-
search projects the ‘‘Concrete Innovation Centre’’ (COIN) and the
‘‘Research Centre on Zero Emission Buildings’’ (ZEB).
Appendix A. Supplementary material
Supplementary data associated with this article can be found, in
the online version, at http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.conbuildmat.
2013.10.100.
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