Stochastic Periodic Microstructures for Multiscale Modelling of Heterogeneous Materials

Plurigaussian simulation is a method of discrete random field generation that can be used to generate many complex geometries depicting real world structures. Whilst it is commonly applied at larger scales to represent geological phenomena, the highly flexible approach is suitable for generating structures at all scales. Here, an extension of plurigaussian simulation to periodic plurigaussian simulation (P-PGS) is presented, such that the resulting fields are periodic in nature. By using periodic Gaussian random fields as components of the method, periodicity is enforced in the generated structures. To substantiate the use of P-PGS in capturing complex heterogeneities in a physically meaningful way, the pore-scale microstructure of cement paste was represented such that its effective properties can be calculated through a computational homogenisation approach. The finite element method is employed to model the diffusion of heat through the medium under dry and saturated pore conditions, where numerical homogenisation is conducted to calculate the effective thermal conductivity of the medium. Comparison of the calculated values with experimental observations indicated that the generated microstructures are suitable for pore-scale representation, given their close match. A maximal error of 1.38% was observed in relation to the numerically determined effective thermal conductivity of mortar paste with air filled pores, and 0.41% when considering water filled pores. As the assumption of a periodic domain is often an underlying feature of numerical homogenisation, this extension of plurigaussian simulation enables a path for its integration into such computational schemes.