Hydrated cement paste is composed of three main phases (i.e., calcium-silicate-hydrates, portlandite, ettringite) and other hydrated phases. The aim of this study was to investigate the use of reactive molecular dynamics simulations to determine elastic constants of main hydrated cement…
Hydrated cement paste is composed of three main phases (i.e., calcium-silicate-hydrates, portlandite, ettringite) and other hydrated phases. The aim of this study was to investigate the use of reactive molecular dynamics simulations to determine elastic constants of main hydrated cement paste composites taking into account adhesion between phases and using the open source code LAMMPS. Then, homogenization scheme was used to determine Young’s modulus and Poisson’s ratio of simplified hardened cement paste (HCP). Three composites of main hydrated cement paste phases were constructed to calculate the elastic constants, Young’s modulus and Poisson’s ratio. These composites are calcium-silicate-hydrates/calcium-silicate-hydrates, calcium-silicate- hydrates/portlandite and calcium-silicate-hydrates/ettringite. We have studied three configurations, which are 1 Å of vacuum layer, 3.1 and 6.2 Å of water layers between these composites, coupled with three different orientations. In order to obtain Young’s modulus and Poisson’s ratio of these composites, we used Voigt-Reuss-Hill (VRH) approximation scheme. After mechanical properties of composites were determined, we used Mori-Tanaka homogenization scheme to estimate Young’s modulus and Poisson’s ratio of simplified HCP. The calculation were shown to lead to the determination of Young’s modulus in the range of 8.1 to 14. 6 GPa. This indicates that there is a possibility of obtaining Young’s modulus of normal hardened cement paste from elastic constants calculations of different composites with other hydrated and unhydrated phases.