A novel lattice model to predict chloride diffusion coefficient of unsaturated cementitious materials based on multi-typed pore structure characteristics

This paper develops a novel lattice diffusive model to quantitatively study the chloride diffusion coefficient in unsaturated cementitious materials, in which the pore voxels are redistributed to make a better representation of a real microstructure of hardened cement paste. Considering the hierarchical microstructure and different drying-wetting cycles, water distributions in multiscale pore structures are modelled and the structure characteristics of water-filled pores, including water connectivity, water tortuosity and effective porosity, are computationally extracted based on that. A lattice diffusion network is established to predict relative chloride diffusion coefficient by combining the effect of both water saturation degree and pore structure characteristics. The predicted results are validated against experimental data, and a concise analytical equation is proposed to predict the relative chloride diffusion coefficient. The equation indicated that the relative chloride diffusion coefficient is proportional to water connectivity but inversely proportional to the square of water tortuosity. Besides, the lattice model's quantitative results reveal that the water connectivity and water tortuosity are highly related to pre-water loading processes, and influenced by the gel pore fraction, which in turn will affect the relative chloride diffusion coefficient. Compared with existing equations and non-redistributed models, the present model could improve the prediction accuracy significantly.