Mechanical Wave Propagation in Civil Engineering Materials

Mechanical wave propagation in civil engineering materials is important for different application fields, such as thermal conductivity, damage detection and sound transmission (including filters and sound barriers). A current open challenge is to understand how the chemistry and microstructures of cementitious materials impact the propagation of mechanical waves in them. The challenge is heightened by the fact that cementitious materials are very heterogeneous at the microscale. In this project, molecular and nanoparticle based simulations will be used in order to construct microstructures of cement hydrates with a range of chemistries and morphologies. I will simulate the dynamic behaviour of these model structures and quantify it in terms of vibrational band structure and density of states. This will open the way to a new and fundamental understanding of how the chemistry and microstructure of cementitious materials can be tailored in order to engineer their vibrational behaviour, for controlled thermal conductivity, soundroof applications, and more efficient damage detection.