Experimental investigation of the short-term creep recovery of hardened cement paste at micrometre length scale
Yidong Gan (TU Delft - Civil Engineering & Geosciences)
Matthieu Vandamme (Université Gustave Eiffel)
Yu Chen (TU Delft - Civil Engineering & Geosciences)
Erik Schlangen (TU Delft - Civil Engineering & Geosciences)
Klaas van Breugel (TU Delft - Civil Engineering & Geosciences)
Branko Šavija (TU Delft - Civil Engineering & Geosciences)
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Abstract
This paper presents an experimental investigation on the short-term creep recovery of cement paste at micrometre length scale. Micro-cantilever beams were fabricated and tested with 8 different loading series using the nanoindenter. It is found that cement pastes show high recovery ratios (>80%) even subjected to very high stress levels. Relatively lower recovery ratios and non-linear creep were also observed for w/c 0.4 samples under high stress levels. A good agreement is found between the results predicted using the linear superposition principle and the experimental results except for the measured non-linear creep in w/c 0.4 samples. It is suggested that the short-term creep recovery may be associated with the microscale stress redistribution or the reversible internal water movement. The observed non-linear creep under the highest stress level may be due to the higher density of microcracks generated during the loading stage, which may further promote the water transfer.
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