Diffusivity in Cement-Silica Fume Based Materials: Experimental and Computer Modeling Results on Mortars

Abstract

Silica fume cement (SFC) based materials are largely used as a containment barrier for nuclear waste management. The safety of this storage mode depends on the knowledge of the effective diffusion coefficients of such materials. This work proposes a combination of computer models able to estimate the diffusion coefficients of SFC pastes and mortars, from a single investigation of the microstructure by nitrogen adsorption. The approach used consists firstly in manufacturing SFC mortars by varying sand volume fraction from 30 to 65% while silica fume replacement and water to binder ratio were respectively set at 10% and 0.4. Nitrogen adsorption tests were then performed and collected data on C-S-H nature are introduced into a SFC pastes hydration model. The latter provides the mineral composition which is an input parameter in the multilayer transport model that estimates the effective diffusion coefficient (De) of cement pastes. For mortars, a 3D biphasic model (sand and cement matrix) was used to compute the (De) of mortars at different inclusion volume fractions. The numerical results were approved by comparison to experimental data obtained from tritiated water (HTO) diffusion tests performed on manufactured mortars.