Concrete creeps, and this creep must be well characterized and modeled to properly design civil engineering infrastructures. Here, we present some results on the creep properties of cementitious materials obtained by using the indentation technique. Firstly, we show that minutes-long microindentations on cement paste yield a quantitative measurement of their long-term logarithmic creep kinetics, which can be used to predict the rate of long-term creep of concrete. Then, by performing microindentations, we study the effect of relative humidity on the long-term creep properties of hydrated C 3 S samples, compacted samples made of pure C-S-H, and compacted samples made of pure CH. The last part is dedicated to a study by nanoindentation of the creep properties of C-S-H phases directly within a hydrated cement paste. We identify scaling relations independent of mix proportion and heat treatment, which we can explain by drawing a thorough analogy between the mechanical behavior of C-S-H and that of clays.
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