Combined experimental and numerical study of uniaxial compression failure of hardened cement paste at micrometre length scale

Discrete lattice fracture modelling of hydrated cement paste under uniaxial compression at micro-scale

“…the compressive strength of the 100 lm HCP cube specimens have recently been measured experimentally and compressive strengths are 159. 52 ± 31.90 MP a, 124.97 ± 24.99 MPa and 110.24 ± 40.788 MPa for w/c ratio of 0.3, 0.4 and 0.5 respectively [24], which are in the same order with the simulated results. In terms of the w/c ratio of 0.3 and 0.4, the simulated strengths are much higher than the experimentally measured mean value.…”

“…Elastic modulus of each phase was derived from nanoindentation experiments [35]. Tensile and compressive strengths were taken from the authors previous works [14,24], wherein micro-scale experiments were developed for the purpose of calibration. The same values have been successfully used to simulate the fracture process of the micro-scale sized specimens under different test configurations, such as one-sided splitting test [36], 3-point bending test [37] and uniaxial compression test [24] by the authors.…”

“…This is achieved through a socalled using a sequentially-linear solution procedure [19,39]. A method consisting in removing the element stiffness stepwise was adopted as described previously in the authors previous work [24]. First the bending and shear stiffness would be removed and only if that same element fails again, the remaining axial stiffness would be removed, see Fig.…”

“…As the HCP is usually applied to endure compressive stress, it is of great importance to understand its mechanical performance in compression. To this end, an experimental approach has been proposed by the authors [24], wherein micro-scaled sized specimens were prepared by a combination of thin-sectioning and micro-dicing techniques and compressed by a flat-end tip instrumented by a nanoindenter. On the basis of the experimentally obtained load-displacement curve and fracture pattern, a microstructure-informed model has been developed to simulate the fracture behaviour of a micro-cube (100 lm) under compression.…”

Micro-cantilever testing on the short-term creep behaviour of cement paste at micro-scale

“…Therefore, in order to gain a complete description of creep behaviour at small scale, the complementary test methods capable of evaluating the microscopic short-term creep behaviour are needed. This can be achieved by small-scale testing of miniature specimens, which has already been used in the determination of mechanical properties [36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43]. In literature, there are mainly two techniques for generating small-scale samples, i.e.…”