The paper reports on some experimental results obtained from the production of mortars prepared using a commercial cement,\ncoarse steelmaking slag, superplasticizer, and water. The behaviour of this reference composition was compared to that of some\nothers containing further additives in order to investigate materials compressive strength after long time ageing. It has been\ndemonstrated that an optimized water/cement ratio coupled with slag particles of size lower than 2.5mm and proper protocol of\npreparation leads to the production of materials with good mechanical properties after 28, 90, and 180 days of ageing. The resulting\nmaterials therefore appeared as good candidates for civil engineering applications.However, the present research also demonstrates\nthat the mortar samples of all of the compositions prepared suffer from decay and compressive strength decrease after long time\nageing in water. In the present paper the results are explained taking account of materials residual porosity and alkali silica reaction\nwhich occurs in the samples.
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