Research Article Feasibility of Using Phase Change Materials to Control the Heat of Hydration in Massive Concrete Structures

License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. This paper presents experimental results that can be applied to select a possible phase change material (PCM), such as a latent heat material (LHM), to control the hydration heat in mass concrete structures. Five experimental tests (microconduction, simplified adiabatic temperature rise, heat, and compressive strength tests) were conducted to select themost desirable LHMout of seven types of inorganic PCMused in cementmortar and to determine themost suitablemix design.The results of these experimental tests were used to assess the feasibility of using PCM to reduce hydration heat in mass concrete that was examined. The experimental results show that cement mortar containing barium- [Ba(OH) 2 ⋅8H 2 O] based PCM has the lowest amount of total hydration heat of the cement pastes. The barium-based PCM provides good latent heat properties that help to prevent volume change and microcracks caused by thermal stress in mass concrete. 1