Simulation of cement hydration and the connectivity of the capillary pore space

✍ Scribed by Parviz Navi; Christian Pignat

• Book ID: 104375377
• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1996
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 882 KB
• Volume: 4
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1065-7355
• DOI: 10.1016/s1065-7355(96)90052-8

✦ Synopsis

A lot of work has been carried out previously on modeling the microstructure of cement paste. These models can be classified in three categories: overall kinetics, particle kinetics, and hybrid kinetics. We have implemented an integrated particle kinetics model for three-dimensional simulation of the evolution of tricalcium silicate (C3S) microstructure during hydration. This model explicitly takes into account the effect of interparticle contacts and the accessibility of water in pores on the rate of hydration and on structure formation. The hydration process is controlled by different mechanisms. One of the mechanisms, of parabolic nature, allows us to introduce the effect of interconnections. The microstructural development is shown at various degrees of dehydration. The size of pores in this simulation can approach zero. The overall degree of hydration, the hydraulic radius, and the connectivity of the capillary pore space of the hydrated cement with different water-to-cement (w/c) ratios, are calculated at each step of time. Plotting pore connectivity in terms of porosity results in a single curve that is independent of w/c ratio.