Extraction of effective cement paste diffusivities from X-ray microtomography scans

• Main Authors: Karim, M.R., Krabbenhoft, K.
• Format: Article
• Published: 2010
• Subjects: TA Engineering (General). Civil engineering (General)
• Online Access: http://eprints.um.edu.my/8781/; http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?eid=2-s2.0-77955849147&partnerID=40&md5=ecd300f790c58e7887bce49cd8e265d5 http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781118557723.ch19/summary
• Institution: Universiti Malaya

The problem of extracting effective diffusivities of cement pastes on the basis of X-ray microtomography images is considered. A general computational homogenization framework is developed and applied to a variety of cement pastes whose microstructure has been digitized to a resolution of 1 mu m. At this resolution, important submicron features are not resolved. Consequently, we propose a methodology whereby the pore space is ascribed a diffusivity less than the free diffusivity. For this purpose, a simple rule that incorporates microtomography data is proposed and shown to yield satisfactory results.