Monitoring and modeling the hydration of steel fibre-reinforced cement-based material in very early age

Abstract

This paper studies the hydration characterization of steel fibre-reinforced cement-based material (SFRCM) in very early age (0–20 h) using electromechanical impedance (EMI) technique and three-dimensional meso-scale hydration models. Compared with the conventional researches, this study not only conducts an EMI-based hydration monitoring experiment, but also presents a novel numerical method to comprehensively reveal the effects of different mixtures on the hydration characterization of SFRCM. To perform the hydration monitoring, piezoelectric-based spherical smart aggregate (SSA) sensors were embedded in SFRCM specimens to sample admittance signals. The measurements were conducted every hour after completing cast, and a total of 20 h was recorded. Accordingly, a novel three-dimensional meso-scale hydration model that assumes a kind of meso-structure containing aggregate particles and steel fibres is first developed using finite element method. The feasibility of this developed model for characterizing SFRCM hydration was verified by contrastively analyzing quantification metrics obtained experimentally and numerically. Eventually, the amount of aggregate particles and geometry of steel fibres were further demonstrated to potentially affect the hydration process.