Elucidating the effect of accelerated carbonation on porosity and mechanical properties of hydrated Portland cement paste using X-ray tomography and advanced micromechanical testing

Hongzhi Zhang, Claudia Romero Rodriguez*, Hua Dong, Yidong Gan, Erik Schlangen, Branko Šavija

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleScientificpeer-review

17 Citations (Scopus)
59 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Carbonation of hydrated cement paste (HCP) causes numerous chemo-mechanical changes in the microstructure, e.g., porosity, strength, elastic modulus, and permeability, which have a significant influence on the durability of concrete structures. Due to its complexity, much is still not understood about the process of carbonation of HCP. The current study aims to reveal the changes in porosity and micromechanical properties caused by carbonation using micro-beam specimens with a cross-section of 500 μm x 500 μm. X-ray computed tomography and micro-beam bending tests were performed on both noncarbonated and carbonated HCP micro-beams for porosity characterization and micromechanical property measurements, respectively. The experimental results show that the carbonation decreases the total porosity and increases micromechanical properties of the HCP micro-beams under the accelerated carbonation. The correlation study revealed that both the flexural strength and elastic modulus increase linearly with decreasing porosity.

Original languageEnglish
Article number471
Number of pages14
JournalMicromachines
Volume11
Issue number5
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2020

Bibliographical note

This article belongs to the Special Issue Small Scale Deformation using Advanced Nanoindentation Techniques, Volume II

Keywords

  • Carbonation
  • Hydrated cement paste
  • Micromechanical properties
  • Porosity

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