As mentioned in the introduction, the impact of the cement’s hydration on the dark-field signal was previously studied with succeeding dark-field images acquired during the hardening of cement.
The observed decline of the cement’s scattering signal is related to the growth of the hydrate phase and to the shrinkage of the initial cement particles.
Contrary to this, we observed an increase of the scattering signal when aggregates such as
limestone grains were added to the cement paste in further experiments. Here, we report on these effects based
on a time-resolved three-dimensional dark-field CT study.