An experimental and numerical study on water permeability of concrete

Durability of concrete depends largely on its water permeability, which is dominated by the composition and difficultly evaluated. This paper presents a three-dimensional (3D) FE algorithm to investigate the water transport performance in concrete. This FE model possesses three-phase mesostructure consisting of coarse aggregates, mortar matrix, and the interfacial transition zone (ITZ) which is practically modeled by the zero-thickness interface element. A series of numerical tests with regard to concrete samples containing different volume fractions of coarse aggregates are conducted. The calculated permeability coefficients are in reasonable accordance with the physical experiment data. Effects of aggregates and ITZ on the concrete permeability are also quantitatively studied by the numerical test. It is proved that the proposed algorithm is capable of modeling the permeable characteristics of concrete which is affected greatly by its heterogeneous mesostructure.