This paper deals with an assessment of fracture properties of micro-level components of hydrated cement paste. Fracture energy and fracture toughness are studied by means of several experimental techniques at the micrometer scale. Nanoindentation is used as a primary tool…
This paper deals with an assessment of fracture properties of micro-level components of hydrated cement paste. Fracture energy and fracture toughness are studied by means of several experimental techniques at the micrometer scale. Nanoindentation is used as a primary tool for the material characterization. The work includes analysis of fracture mechanisms under the sharp indenter using focused ion beam (FIB) technology combined with scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Usual microscale approaches used in brittle solids are based on the observation of cracks from surface view after indentation. In this work, an energetic approach and decomposition of work of indentation into plastic and other parts is used instead. Based on cross sectioning of indents via FIB, several assumptions are done on the fracture area under the tip and semi-quantitative estimates of the low-scale fracture energy are performed for the cement paste components. Statistical deconvolution is applied to sort out the individual phase fracture properties.