Project: Supercritical drying of cement
I am a graduate student in Civil Engineering at ETH Zurich (Switzerland) with majors in construction materials and structural engineering. During spring 2016, I will be a Visiting Student Research Collaborator in Princeton University working for Prof. Scherer’s group.
The main topic of my work here is supercritical drying (SCD) of cement paste, a part of Dr. Zhang’s research on the microstructure development during cement hydration. SCD is viewed as an innovative way to dry samples before observation under a scanning electron microscope and it is believed to minimize damage, compared to conventional drying. However, this type of process has not yet been used for cement samples and must therefore be optimized.