Coupled Mechanical and Chemical Damage in Calcium Leached Cementitious Structures

The Elastic Properties of Calcium Leached Cement

Calcium leaching induced aging in concrete creates a new material with degraded macroscopic mechanical properties. Although the degradation of strength has been elaborately studied in the last decade, the degradation of elasticity has not been investigated in the same depth. This thesis presents a combined experimental-theoretical investigation of the loss of elastic modulus due to calcium leac...

Mechanical effects coupled with calcium waves

where θ = ∇ · u is the dilation and u is the displacement. The stress tensor σ ≡ σij , where (1.3) σij = θλδij + 2Gǫij + ν1θ,tδij + ν2ǫij,t + τij . In Eq. (1.1), c denotes the free cytosolic calcium concentration, D is its effective diffusion coefficient, f(c) is the function describing calcium transport into and out of the cytosol. In Eq. (1.3), ǫij are the components of the deformation tensor...

Coupled chemical-hydraulic-mechanical behaviour of bentonites

Electrical Impedance Tomographic Methods for Sensing Strain Fields and Crack Damage in Cementitious Structures

Cement-based composites (for example, concrete) are brittle materials that crack when loaded in tension. Current strategies for crack detection are primarily based upon visual inspection by an inspector; such approaches are labor-intensive and expensive. Direly needed are sensors that can be included within a structural health monitoring (SHM) system for automated quantification of crack damage...

Mango Seed Fibers Surface Chemical Modification Applied as Mechanical Reinforcement in Cementitious Composites

Cementitious composite is one of the most widely used construction materials in the world because its abundant resources, strong adaptability and mature production process [1]. Despite cementitious matrices present good compression strength, they are brittle and usually break when suffer some strain caused by tensile effort. Aiming to overpass this problem some fibers can be used as reinforceme...