Modeling of Water Migration during Internal Curing with Superabsorbent Polymers
Publication: Journal of Materials in Civil Engineering
Volume 24, Issue 8
Abstract
The mobility of water in hardening cement paste is an important aspect in view of the effectiveness of internal curing. A mechanistic-type numerical model of cementitious materials is applied for the analysis of water migration kinetics from internal curing agents [superabsorbent polymers (SAP)] into hydrating cement pastes with a low water-to-cement ratio. It is shown that the release of curing water at early age (i.e., during approximately the first day of hydration) allows for a uniform and practically instantaneous distribution of water within the whole volume of cured paste, even if the distances for water migration are as high as 2–3 mm. The evolution of permeability as a result of the hydration process is shown to have a major impact on the mobility of water in the cement paste. The depercolation of capillary porosity may substantially inhibit the water transport. The analysis shows that a part of the water first received by the paste in the proximity of the SAP can be later redistributed to a large volume of hardening paste, even after the permeability has become very low.
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Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank Dr. Pavel Trtik from Empa for providing the image from neutron tomography used for Fig. 1 and for the stimulating discussions.
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Published In
Journal of Materials in Civil Engineering
Volume 24 • Issue 8 • August 2012
Pages: 1006 - 1016
Copyright
© 2012. American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: May 9, 2011
Accepted: Dec 14, 2011
Published online: Dec 19, 2011
Published in print: Aug 1, 2012
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