ABSTRACT
Numerical researches on external sulfate attack have been excessively conducted to study the chemical mechanisms of this destructive action. However, the influence of external sulfate attack on the material property of cementitious material has rarely been investigated. Based on the previous study (Yu et al., 2015), the degradation of elastic modulus under external sulfate attack is studied in this paper by using a micromechanical method, i.e. the MoriTanaka (MT) method. The entire numerical procedure is applied to model the external sulfate attack on a cement mortar, and the influence of the shape of cracks on the elastic modulus is also discussed.
