Abstract
The purpose of this study was to develop a new method for obtaining diffusion, film and shrinkage coefficients of cement-based materials. These coefficients are required for the numerical simulation of the effect of shrinkage strain on the deformation of concrete structures using finite element method. An experimental approach for obtaining the relative humidity distribution in the specimen at arbitrary drying times and a numerical method for determining the material coefficients from the experimental data are proposed in this paper. Results show that this method can provide us with the diffusion coefficient not only as a function of moisture content but also as a function of relative humidity in cement-based materials.
