Modelling of the voxel-based microstructure of the cement paste

Abstract

Microstructural modelling of the cement paste is a hard task due to its extremely complex and heterogeneous structure. At the same time, accurate predicting of early age properties of the cement paste is directly dependent on how close the microstructural model is to the real structure. There are two approaches in modelling microstructure development of the cement paste: vector and discrete, both generate a structure of the cement paste with randomly distributed phases. The voxel-based discrete approach is best suited for generating and processing random morphology of cement in the cement paste, in contrast to the vector approach limited by its regular geometric shape. A major challenge the voxel-based discrete approach faces is to reconstruct the real random distribution of cement in the fresh cement paste. The paper presents a voxel-based microstructural model of the cement paste based on the Gaussian blur method to generate the initial spatial distribution of phases in it.