Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Date of Award

2017

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

M.S. in Engineering Science

Department

Mechanical Engineering

First Advisor

Arunachalam M. Rajendran

Second Advisor

P. Raju Mantena

Third Advisor

Tyrus McCarty

Relational Format

dissertation/thesis

Abstract

The effect of volumetric replacement of cementitious materials by an inert filler known as hollow glass microspheres on elastic properties is evaluated in this study through a combined computational and experimental approach. This approach considered the variation in properties of type I Portland cement for 0, 5, 10, and 15% volume fractions of two kind of glass microspheres; one was high density with high crushing strength, and the other with a relative lower density. Using a suite of software called Virtual Cement and Concrete Testing Laboratory (VCCTL), the microstructural details were determined for 80% degree of hydration of the cement mixture for these different volume fractions. The VCCTL-generated three dimensional heterogeneous microstructures with various micro-constituents, such as the C-S-H gel, tricalcium silicate, and other cement byproducts, were explicitly modeled in ABAQUS© commercial finite element code. The representative volume element (RVE) in ABAQUS was a 100x100x100 μm3 cube. Since the symmetry as well as the anisotropy of the cementitious material system is not fully established, iso-strain based boundary conditions were applied to this RVE towards determining various elements of the elastic tensor. The computationally calculated elastic moduli compared reasonably well with data from quasi-static compression tests for various volume fractions of the glass microspheres.

Concentration/Emphasis

Emphasis: Mechanical Engineering

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