Journal of Central South University

, Volume 20, Issue 4, pp 1115–1121 | Cite as

Characterization of microstructure evolution of cement paste by micro computed tomography

  • Yong-jia He (何永佳)
  • Jason Mote
  • David A. Lange
Article
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Accepted:

Abstract

Micro computed tomography (Micro-CT) was applied to obtain three-dimensional images of the microstructure of cement paste (water-to-cement mass ratio of 0.5) at different ages. By using the Amira software, component phases of the cement paste such as pores, hydration products, and unhydrated clinker particles were segmented from each other based on their 3D image grey levels; their relative contents were also calculated with the software, and the data are 61.2%, 0% and 38.8% at the beginning of hydration and 11.8%, 78.5% and 9.7% at 28 d age, respectively. The hydration degree of cement paste at different ages was compared with the experimental data acquired by loss on ignition (LOI) tests. The results show that the calculated and measured data reasonably agree with each other, which indicates that micro-CT is a useful and reliable approach to characterize the micro structure evolution of hydrating cement paste.

Key words

Micro computed tomography (Micro-CT) 3D image microstructure cement paste 
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Copyright information

© Central South University Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013

Authors and Affiliations

  • Yong-jia He (何永佳)
    • 1
    • 2
  • Jason Mote
    • 3
  • David A. Lange
    • 3
  1. 1.State Key Laboratory of Silicate Materials for ArchitecturesWuhan University of TechnologyWuhanChina
  2. 2.School of Materials Science and EngineeringWuhan University of TechnologyWuhanChina
  3. 3.Department of Civil and Environmental EngineeringUniversity of Illinois at Urbana-ChampaignUrbanaUSA

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