Simulation of Microstructure and Ionic Diffusivity for Leached Cement Pastes
Publication: Journal of Materials in Civil Engineering
Volume 34, Issue 7
Abstract
A numerical framework to study the morphology change of microstructure and ionic diffusivity of leached cement pastes is proposed. According to a two-scale microstructure model, the leached cement paste in the course of portlandite dissolution and C─ S─ H decalcification is modeled. In contrast to recent leaching studies that used particle-based microstructure models to analyze micrometer-sized structures, the novel aspect of this study is the consideration of capillary pores with sizes ranging from tens of nanometers to several micrometers. The evolving microstructure was coupled with the random walk algorithm to calculate diffusion properties in capillary and gel pores of cement pastes during leaching and hydration. Results were in general accord with the reported data from leaching experiments and other simulations. The rarely discussed relationships the simulated 3D microstructure and the ionic diffusivity of leached cement pastes are investigated. In particular, the pore structure, which has different degradation characteristics in each leaching stage, affects the ionic diffusivity variously. The proposed framework has potential as a tool for multiscale simulation of leaching concrete.
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Data Availability Statement
Some or all data, models, or code that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by science and technology project of Shanghai Municipal Engineering Design and Research Institute (Group) (Grant No. K2021J014).
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Published In
Journal of Materials in Civil Engineering
Volume 34 • Issue 7 • July 2022
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© 2022 American Society of Civil Engineers.
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Received: Jul 19, 2021
Accepted: Nov 1, 2021
Published online: Apr 19, 2022
Published in print: Jul 1, 2022
Discussion open until: Sep 19, 2022
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