Classification of microstructures by morphological analysis and estimation of the hydration degree of cement paste in concrete

Cement is an essential material for the development of the civil construction. The analysis of cement-based materials is useful in the evaluation of mechanical properties, water absorption, air permeability and evolution of hydration degree. The latter is the motivation of this paper. New advantageous techniques of analysis based on the image information are possible using electronic microscopy. We propose here an alternative procedure to the segmentation of microstructures of cement and aggregates in concrete. The central idea consists of a particular use of the morphological operator watershed. We report the results of the analysis of about 450 scanning electron microscope (SEM) images.