Numerical Method for Predicting Chloride Diffusivity of Mature Cement Paste
Publication: Journal of Materials in Civil Engineering
Volume 31, Issue 6
Abstract
This paper develops a highly efficient numerical method for estimating the chloride diffusivity of mature cement paste. In the method, the two-dimensional microstructure of cement paste is reconstructed through computer simulation. Each unhydrated cement core and the surrounding inner and outer hydration products are incorporated into an equivalent hydration cement particle (EHCP), and the chloride diffusivity is derived analytically. Based on the first-passage-time equation, an efficient two-dimensional random walk simulation is conducted to estimate the chloride diffusivity of cement paste. It is found from the numerical results that the degree of cement hydration, the capillary porosity, and the chloride diffusivity evaluated from two-dimensional simulation are in excellent agreement with those evaluated from a three-dimensional one but at tremendously reduced computational time, which makes it possible for the method to be implemented on a regular computer. It is also found from the numerical results that, with the proposed EHCP model, the computational time for two-dimensional simulation is further reduced by a factor of about 2. Finally, through comparison with the experimental results obtained in this paper and collected from the literature, the validity of the numerical method is verified.
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Acknowledgments
The financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation (Grant Nos. 51878615 and 51779227) and the Science and Technology Plan Project of Zhejiang Province (Grant No. 2016C33106) of the People’s Republic of China is gratefully acknowledged.
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Published In
Journal of Materials in Civil Engineering
Volume 31 • Issue 6 • June 2019
Copyright
©2019 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: May 29, 2018
Accepted: Nov 30, 2018
Published online: Mar 29, 2019
Published in print: Jun 1, 2019
Discussion open until: Aug 29, 2019
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