Determination of Cement Paste Strength by Nano-indentation on Thin Section

Abstract

In this research a new method is developed to measure material properties of cement paste that makes use of nano-indentation. Thin sections of cement paste are prepared on a glass plate with a small circular hole. These specimens are loaded with a nano-indenter at the location of the hole in the glass plate. The failure mechanism is of a punching shear type. These tests are simulated with a lattice model and in this way the local mechanical properties of the cement paste can be determined. In this paper the method is explained and examples of experiments and simulations are presented.