Liquid water permeability of partially saturated cement paste assessed by dem-based methodology

Permeability of virtual cement seems to exceed experimental data by several orders of magnitude. The differences may actually not be that dramatic, since experimental samples are in practice not always fully saturated as generally assumed. This paper demonstrates that this has enormous effects on permeability. A numerical study is conducted on...

Methodolody for porosimetry in virtual cementitious composites to economically and reliably estimate permeability

A novel methodology is described for porosimetry as well as for water transport through the pore system in dynamic DEM-based virtual cementitious materials. The pore network topology, the pore size distribution and the pore connectivity are assessed on the basis of a robotics-inspired pore delineation method and star volume measurements....

Porosimetry by DraMuTS applied to DEM-produced cementitious materials

Porosimetry of matured cementitious materials is of hiigh interest, because durability is governed by the capillary pore network structure. Experimental approaches are time-consuming, laborious and thus expensive. Fast developments in computer technology make it nowadays possible quite realistically producing cementitious materials in virtual...

Packing of non-spherical aggregate particles by DEM

Loose random and dense random mono-size pacl<ing states were investigated by the discrete element modelling (DEM) for eight types of polyhedral grains, for ellipses with different aspect ratio, for cubes and for spheres. Focus was on density, sphericity of the grains and average value and frequency distribution of coordination number. The 3D...

Analogue simulation by dem of material structure for property estimation of cementitious materials

Realistic simulation of particulate materials like concrete on meso- as well as micro-level is nowadays possible by fast developments in computer technology. This would be a more economic way than by physical experiinents, which are more time-consuming, laborious and thus expensive. This concern the production of the aggregate structure or of...

Particulate structure and microstructure evolution of concrete investigated by DEM: Part 2: Porosimetry in hydrating binders

Durability of concrete in engineering structures is becoming more and more of a major problem. Research into such problems is complicated and expensive, however. Developments in computer technology make it possible nowadays realistically simulating cementitious materials and studying its pore network structure. In this paper use is made of the...

Discrete element modeling approach to porosimetry for durability risk estimation of concrete

The paper introduces a novel approach to porosimetry in virtual concrete, denoted as random node structuring (RNS). The fresh state of this particulate material is produced by the DEM system HADES. Hydration simulation is a hybrid approach making use of wellknown discretization and vector methods. Particle interferences (overlap) in the dynamic...