Microstructure-informed modelling of damage evolution in cement paste

•Macroscopic behaviour from microstructure features and meso-scale principles.•Derivation of microstructure features from high-resolution micro-CT images.•Construction of site-bond model with microstructure information.•Demonstration of agreement between calculated responses and experimental data.•Quantitative assessment of microstructure effects on macroscopic behaviour. Cement paste is a binder for cementitious materials and plays a critical role in their engineering-scale properties. Understanding fracture processes in such materials requires knowledge of damage evolution in cement paste. A site-bond model with elastic-brittle spring bundles is developed here for analysis of the mechanical behaviour of cement paste. It incorporates key microstructure information obtained from high resolution micro-CT. Volume fraction and size distribution of anhydrous cement grains are used for calculating model length scale and elasticity. Porosity and pore size distribution are used to allocate local failure energies. Macroscopic damage emerges from the generation of micro-crack population represented by bond removals. Effects of spatial distribution, porosity and sizes of pores on tensile strength and damage are investigated quantitatively. Results show a good agreement with experiment data, demonstrating that the proposed technology can predict mechanical and fracture behaviour of cementitious materials based exclusively on microstructure information.