Potential of Microwave Curing for Precast Concrete Manufacture

In this paper, an ongoing research sponsored by Innovate UK on developing an intelligent microwave system for manufacturing concrete products is introduced. The key features of this microwave system include using optical fibre Bragg grating (FBG) sensors to control the temperature and the humidity inside concrete and microwave oven cavity, respectively. Using this tailor-made microwave system, research is ongoing in the Advanced and Innovative Materials (AIM) Group at University College London to explore the potential of curing two types of low-carbon cementitious systems, namely high-volume fly ash (HVFA) and alkali-activated fly ash (AAFA). In both systems, thermal curing is essential for the strength development, in particular, early strength development. Their results indicate that, by using the microwave curing technique, the low-carbon performance can be achieved from both systems whilst the early strength was not affected. The current results also demonstrate a good potential of microwave curing for manufacturing low-carbon precast concrete elements in the future