Masoero, Enrico, Del Gado, Emanuela, Pellenq, Roland J. -M., Yip, Sidney and Ulm, Franz-Josef 2014. Nano-scale mechanics of colloidal C-S-H gels. Soft Matter 10 (3) , pp. 491-499. 10.1039/c3sm51815a |
Abstract
Gels of calcium–silicate–hydrates (C–S–H) are the glue that is largely responsible for the mechanical properties of cement. Despite their practical relevance, their nano-scale structure and mechanics are still mainly unexplored, because of the difficulties in characterizing them in a complex material like cement. We propose a colloidal model to investigate the gel mechanics emerging in the critical range of length-scales from several tens to hundreds of nanometers. We show that the size polydispersity of the hydrates and size-dependent effective interactions can explain the mechanical heterogeneities detected in nano-indentation experiments. We also show how these features control the arising of irreversible structural rearrangements under deformation, which are good candidates as nano-scale mechanisms underlying mechanical aging and slow structural relaxation in the gels.
Item Type: | Article |
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Date Type: | Publication |
Status: | Published |
Schools: | Engineering |
Publisher: | Royal Society of Chemistry |
ISSN: | 1744-683X |
Date of Acceptance: | 28 October 2013 |
Last Modified: | 06 Jan 2024 02:08 |
URI: | https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/144211 |
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