The origins and evolution of cement hydration models

Our ability to predict hydration behavior is becoming increasingly relevant to the concrete community as modelers begin to link material performance to the dynamics of material properties and chemistry. At early ages, the properties of concrete are changing rapidly due to chemical transformations that affect mechanical, thermal and transport responses of the composite. At later ages, the resulting, nano-, micro-, meso- and macroscopic structure generated by hydration will control the life-cycle performance of the material in the field. Ultimately, creep, shrinkage, chemical and physical durability, and all manner of mechanical response are linked to hydration. As a way to enable the modeling community to better understand hydration, a review of hydration models is presented offering insights into their mathematical origins and relationships one-to-the-other. The quest for a universal model begins in the 1920`s and continues to the present, and is marked by a number of critical milestones. Unfortunately, the origins and physical interpretation of many of the most commonly used models have been lost in their overuse and the trail of citations that vaguely lead to the original manuscripts. To help restore some organization, models were sorted into four categories based primarily on their mathematical and theoretical basis: (1) mass continuity-based, (2) nucleation-based, (3) particle ensembles, and (4) complex multi-physical and simulation environments. This review provides a concise catalogue of models and in most cases enough detail to derive their mathematical form. Furthermore, classes of models are unified by linking them to their theoretical origins, thereby making their derivations and physical interpretations more transparent. Models are also used to fit experimental data so that their characteristics and ability to predict hydration calorimetry curves can be compared. A sort of evolutionary tree showing the progression of models is given along with some insights into the nature of future work yet needed to develop the next generation of cement hydration models.