文章基本信息

标题：Nanogranular origin of concrete creep
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作者：Matthieu Vandamme ; Franz-Josef Ulm
期刊名称：Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
印刷版ISSN：0027-8424
电子版ISSN：1091-6490
出版年度：2009
卷号：106
期号：26
页码：10552-10557
DOI：10.1073/pnas.0901033106
语种：English
出版社：The National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
摘要：Concrete, the solid that forms at room temperature from mixing Portland cement with water, sand, and aggregates, suffers from time-dependent deformation under load. This creep occurs at a rate that deteriorates the durability and truncates the lifespan of concrete structures. However, despite decades of research, the origin of concrete creep remains unknown. Here, we measure the in situ creep behavior of calcium-silicate-hydrates (C-S-H), the nano-meter sized particles that form the fundamental building block of Portland cement concrete. We show that C-S-H exhibits a logarithmic creep that depends only on the packing of 3 structurally distinct but compositionally similar C-S-H forms: low density, high density, ultra-high density. We demonstrate that the creep rate ({approx}1/t) is likely due to the rearrangement of nanoscale particles around limit packing densities following the free-volume dynamics theory of granular physics. These findings could lead to a new basis for nanoengineering concrete materials and structures with minimal creep rates monitored by packing density distributions of nanoscale particles, and predicted by nanoscale creep measurements in some minute time, which are as exact as macroscopic creep tests carried out over years.