Quantitative dispersion characterization of cement particles in hardened cement matrix

Abstract

Optimizing the cement particle distribution in hardened cement matrix is one of the effective means to utilize cement efficiently, and obtaining information about cement distribution is a prerequisite for this. In view of this, this paper investigates the quantitative dispersion of cement particles in hardened cement paste from an experimental perspective. Cement pastes with different water-binder (W/B) ratios were prepared as the objects. BSE images of these samples were acquired for further analysis, including Delaunay triangulation algorithm, nearest neighbor distance function G(r) and fractal theory. Results showed that when the W/B ratio increases from 0.36 to 0.42, the average cement particle spacing rises from 32.7 μm to 34.9 μm and the proportion of particles with spacing between particle centroids <20 μm decreases from 41.96 % to 25.98 %. Similarly, the increasing W/B ratio causes the nearest neighbor distance function G(r) to shift towards larger distances. When the W/B ratio is 0.34, the median distance between particles (R50) exhibits the most significant change. Additionally, the intricate details of cement particle spacing information can be accurately described by fractal theory. Parameters such as R50 and the proportion of particles with spacing between centroids <20 μm demonstrate strong fits with various fractal parameters. Notably, they exhibit optimal fitting with the spectral width of the generalized fractal spectrum, with an R2 value of 0.99.