THE MULTIFRACTAL PROPERTY OF HETEROGENEOUS MICROSTRUCTURE IN CEMENT PASTE
Yun Gao, Yehan Gu, Song Mu, Jinyang Jiang, Jiaping Liu
Abstract
Highlights (1) Microstructure of cement paste is acquired through computed tomography. (2) Multifractal property of heterogeneous microstructure is examined. (3) Incorporation of blast furnace slag results in a decrease of singularity width. The microstructure of cement paste is highly heterogeneous in nature that plays a significant role in macroscopic performance. This paper is dedicated to examining the multifractal property of microstructure in cement paste, based on which the microstructural heterogeneity could be quantified meanwhile. In particular, the X-ray computed tomography is adopted to acquire the realistic three-dimensional (3D) microstructure. Then, a thorough examination is performed on the multifractal property with respect to the partition function, the generalized dimension and the multifractal spectrum. Results indicate that the multifractal property in terms of local porosity can be recognized for the heterogeneous microstructure in both ordinary and blast furnace slag blended Portland cement pastes. The multifractal spectrum or singularity width is available to account for the degree of heterogeneity.