A nanoscale perspective on the effects of transverse microprestress on drying creep of nanoporous solids

Robert Sinko, Zdeněk P. Bažant, Sinan Keten*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

7 Scopus citations

Abstract

The Pickett effect describes the excess non-additive strain developed during drying of a nanoporous solid material under creep. One explanation for its origins, developed using micromechanical models, is the progressive relaxation of internally developed microprestress. However, these models have not explicitly considered the effects of this microprestress on nanoscale energy barriers that govern the relative motion and displacement between nanopore walls during deformation. Here, we evaluate the nanoscale effects of transverse microprestresses on the drying creep behaviour of a nanoscale slit pore using coarse-grained molecular dynamics. We find that the underlying energy barrier depends exponentially on the transverse microprestress, which is attributed to changes in the effective viscosity and degree of nanoconfinement of molecules in the water interlayer. Specifically, as the transverse microprestress is relaxed (i.e. its magnitude decreases), the activation energy barrier is reduced, thereby leading to an acceleration of the creep behaviour and a stronger Pickett effect. Based on our simulation results, we introduce a new microprestress-dependent energy term into our existing Arrhenius model, which describes the relative displacement of pore walls as a function of the underlying activation energy barriers. Our findings further verify the existing micromechanical theories

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article number20170570
JournalProceedings of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences
Volume474
Issue number2209
DOIs
StatePublished - 2018

Keywords

  • Concrete
  • Drying creep
  • Molecular dynamics
  • Nanoconfinement
  • Pickett effect

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Mathematics(all)
  • Engineering(all)
  • Physics and Astronomy(all)

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