Modeling cement hydration by connecting a nucleation and growth mechanism with a diffusion mechanism. Part II: Portland cement paste hydration

Abstract

AbstractA particle-based C3S hydration model with only three rate constants developed in Part I of this study is further developed and applied to Portland cement paste hydration. Experimental data are obtained with chemical shrinkage tests of cement pastes prepared with different water to cement (w/c) ratios (0.3–0.5), and cured at different temperatures (24°C–63°C) and pressures (0.69–51.7 MPa). The proposed model produces exceptionally good fits to test data. The fitted results indicate that the entire process of cement hydration can be modeled by connecting a nucleation and growth mechanism with a diffusion mechanism. Furthermore, the results reveal that the deceleration period of cement hydration may be due to the gradual transition of the rate-controlling mechanisms of different particles. The fitted rate constants generally follow basic chemical kinetics laws in terms of their dependencies on curing temperature and pressure, and appear to be largely independent of w/c ratio.