Visco-elastic model of foamed cement paste under uniaxial compression

Abstract

Foamed cement pastes have been widely used in the backfilling projects, such as road widening and abutment embankment. However, due to its unique porous structures, there have been limit studies focused on developing mechanical model for predicting its engineering behavior. This study conducted a constitutive modeling for describing the mechanical behavior of foamed cement paste. Two types of mechanical element, i.e., elastic element and viscous element, were selected, and their combination was proposed to characterize the basic mechanical properties and behavior of foamed cement paste. By adjusting the combination rules (in series or in parallel) among the basic elements, a strain-based damage element and a visco-elastic-damage combination element model (VED model) were developed based on the MATLAB/Simulink platform. Through a comparison with experimental results, it is demonstrated that the proposed model effectively captures the mechanical behavior of foam concrete under uniaxial compressive loading.