DOI 10.1617s11527-006-9147-3 ORIGINAL ARTICLE Cement hydration building bridges and dams at.pdfVIP

Abstract The concurrent goals of cement hydration are to percolate (bridge) the original cement particles into a load-bearing network and to depercolate (dam) the original water-filled capillary porosity. The initial volume, particle size distribution, and flocculation/dispersion state of the cement particles have a large influence on both hydration rates and microstructure devel- opment. Likewise, the capillary porosity as char- acterized by its pore size distribution, percolation state, and saturation state also influences both hydration kinetics and microstructure. In this paper, experiment