Simulation of water permeability and water vapor diffusion through hardened cement paste

The transport properties of cement-based materials significantly affect their durability. This results from the fact that most of the damaging reagents are transported, often solved in water, through the open pore space into the microstructure. This paper focuses on simulating water permeation (movement under a gradient of pressure) and water vapor diffusion (movement under a gradient of concentration) through hardened cement paste (hcp). The main goal is to derive the water permeability and the water vapor diffusion coefficient directly from the morphology of the 3D microstructure. For this purpose microtomographic images of a hcp made of ordinary Portland cement are used to represent the microstructure and especially the pore space through which the moisture transport will occur. With the use of a skeletonization algorithm, also known as "thinning algorithm", the skeleton or centerline of the pore space is extracted. This skeleton is in a second step converted into a transportation network of cylindrical tubes. Bernoulli's law is applied to every tube for simulating water permeation. The permeability coefficient is then calculated by using Darcy's law. In the case of water vapor diffusion the diffusion coefficient is calculated using Fick's law.