How Water-Aggregate Interactions Affect Concrete Creep: Multiscale Analysis

Abstract

Customary micromechanics models for the poroelasticity, creep, and strength of concrete restrict the domain affected by the hydration reaction to the cement paste volume, considering the latter as a thermodynamically closed system with respect to the (chemically inert) aggregate. Accordingly, the famous Powers hydration model appears to be a natural choice for the determination of clinker, cement, water, and aggregate volume fractions entering such micromechanical models. The situation changes once internal curing occurs, i.e., once part of the water present is absorbed initially by the aggregate, and then is sucked back to the cement paste during the hydration reaction. This paper develops an extended hydration model for this case, introducing water uptake capacity of the aggregate and paste void-filling extent as additional quantities. Based on constant values for just these two new quantities, and on previously determined creep properties of cement pastes as functions of an effective water:cement mass ratio (i.e., that associated with the cement paste domain rather than with the entire concrete volume), a series of ultrashort-term creep tests on different mortars and concretes can be very satisfactorily predicted by a standard microviscoelastic mathematical model. This further extends the applicability range of micromechanics modeling in cement and concrete research.