Coupled mass transport, chemical, and mechanical modelling in cementitious materials: A dual-lattice approach

Critical sets of civil infrastructure systems form the foundation for quality of life and enable global development and progress. Consuming vast amounts of material resources and energy, it is essential that global civil infrastructure is designed according to broad, long-termdesign goals for the benefit of our planet and the current and future generations of humans, animals, and plants that will call it home.

In particular, deterioration of civil infrastructure together with increasing loads presents a major challenge to achieving these goals in many developed countries. In this paper a coupled mass transport, chemical, and mechanical modelling approach for the deterioration prediction in cementitious materials is outlined.

Deterioration prediction is thereby based on coupled modelling of (i) mass transport, i.e. moisture and ionic transport, in porous media, (ii) thermodynamic modelling of phase equilibria in cementitious materials, and (iii) mechanical performance including corrosionand load-induced damages. The presented dual-lattice approach is fully coupled, i.e. information, such as moisture content, phase assemblage, damage state, transport properties, etc., are constantly exchanged within the model.