A novel numerical multi-component model for simulating hydration of cement

A numerical multi-component model to simulate the microstructural evolution of plain cement as well as pozzolanic blended cement during hydration is presented. The model is an extension of the so-called "Integrated Particle Kinetics Model" (IPKM) developed by Navi and Pignat [8] to simulate hydration of tricalcium silicate grains. The IPKM is extended to a new model that accounts for different major cement compounds and for a pozzolanic admixture (in case of blended paste). Therefore, the proposed model is referred to as the "Extended Integrated Particle Kinetics Model" (XIPKM). New computational techniques used in the simulation are also presented. A numerical method to estimate the basic penetration rate of the particle reaction front based on experimental data is proposed. The results obtained from four simulated samples of plain cement and pozzolanic blended cement are compared with experimental data from different authors. (c) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.