TY - JOUR
T1 - Microstructure-guided numerical simulations to predict the thermal performance of a hierarchical cement-based composite material
AU - Das, Sumanta
AU - Aguayo, Matthew
AU - Rajan, Subramaniam
AU - Sant, Gaurav
AU - Neithalath, Narayanan
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors gratefully acknowledge funding from European Union's Seventh Framework Program for research, technological development, and demonstration under The ERA-NET Plus Infravation Program , Grant Agreement No: 31109806.0001 . Entropy Solutions is acknowledged for the supply of PCMs while Stalite, Hess Pumice Products, and Trinity Lightweight are acknowledged for supplying the lightweight aggregates. The contents of this paper reflect the views of the authors who are responsible for the facts and accuracy of the data presented herein, and do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of the funding agency, nor do the contents constitute a standard, specification, or a regulation. We gratefully acknowledge the use of facilities within the Laboratory for the Science of Sustainable Infrastructural Materials (LS-SIM) and the Computational Mechanics Laboratory at Arizona State University.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 Elsevier Ltd
PY - 2018/3
Y1 - 2018/3
N2 - This paper presents a microstructure-guided numerical homogenization technique to predict the effective thermal conductivity of a hierarchical cement-based material containing phase change material (PCM)-impregnated lightweight aggregates (LWA). Porous inclusions such as LWAs embedded in a cementitious matrix are filled with multiple fluid phases including PCM to obtain desirable thermal properties for building and infrastructure applications. Simulations are carried out on realistic three-dimensional microstructures generated using pore structure information. An inverse analysis procedure is used to extract the intrinsic thermal properties of those microstructural components for which data is not available. The homogenized heat flux is predicted for an imposed temperature gradient from which the effective composite thermal conductivity is computed. The simulated effective composite thermal conductivities are found to correlate very well with experimental measurements for a family of LWA-PCM composites considered in the paper. Comparisons with commonly used analytical homogenization models show that the microstructure-guided simulation approach provides superior results for composites exhibiting large property contrast between phases. By linking the microstructure and thermal properties of hierarchical materials, an efficient framework is available for optimizing the material design to improve thermal efficiency of a wide variety of heterogeneous materials.
AB - This paper presents a microstructure-guided numerical homogenization technique to predict the effective thermal conductivity of a hierarchical cement-based material containing phase change material (PCM)-impregnated lightweight aggregates (LWA). Porous inclusions such as LWAs embedded in a cementitious matrix are filled with multiple fluid phases including PCM to obtain desirable thermal properties for building and infrastructure applications. Simulations are carried out on realistic three-dimensional microstructures generated using pore structure information. An inverse analysis procedure is used to extract the intrinsic thermal properties of those microstructural components for which data is not available. The homogenized heat flux is predicted for an imposed temperature gradient from which the effective composite thermal conductivity is computed. The simulated effective composite thermal conductivities are found to correlate very well with experimental measurements for a family of LWA-PCM composites considered in the paper. Comparisons with commonly used analytical homogenization models show that the microstructure-guided simulation approach provides superior results for composites exhibiting large property contrast between phases. By linking the microstructure and thermal properties of hierarchical materials, an efficient framework is available for optimizing the material design to improve thermal efficiency of a wide variety of heterogeneous materials.
KW - Finite element
KW - Lightweight aggregate
KW - Microstructure
KW - Numerical homogenization
KW - Phase change materials (PCMs)
KW - Thermal conductivity
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U2 - 10.1016/j.cemconcomp.2017.12.003
DO - 10.1016/j.cemconcomp.2017.12.003
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85037548324
VL - 87
SP - 20
EP - 28
JO - Cement and Concrete Composites
JF - Cement and Concrete Composites
SN - 0958-9465
ER -