Rheological model of cement-based material slurry with different water-cement ratio and temperature

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to obtain a constitutive model of cement-based material in the rheological stage, which owns the different water-cement ratio (w/c) and temperature and have a significant impact on the workability of concrete materials.Design/methodology/approachIt is introduced a modified Arrhenius equation into the Herschel-Bulkley model, which is widely applied in rheological analysis and constructed an ordinary differential equation (ODE) of w/c from the Navier-Stokes equation. By solving the ODE, an approximate constitutive relation of cement-based materials included w/c and temperature is derived. Compared with the experimental results, the present model is validated.FindingsThe shear stress and shear rate curves with different w/c and temperature are simulated by the present method, and the present model can be applied to analyze the changes of apparent viscosity in cement-based material slurry as the w/c and temperature varying.Originality/valueThis work gives a mathematical model, which can effectively approximate the shear stress-shear rate relation with different w/c and temperature in the rheological stage of cement-based material.