Abstract. The possibility of a thermal imaging technique for studying the setting of composite materials in the light of the paradigm of multifocal structure formation is analyzed. Since thermal violated observations are characterized by a high thermal sensitivity to temperature gradients up to hundredths of degrees, they make it possible to distinguish the temperature differences arising in the adjacent sections of the hardening binding. A technique for obtaining thermal images (thermograms) of a hardening composite binder is implemented. A series of thermograms of setting processes was obtained, for two of them a quantitative study was carried out, including the temperature gauge and the construction of several types of graphic mappings of the obtained patterns ‒ the normalized frequency of the distribution of the area of the binder for those temperatures and two types of densitograms ‒ radial and circular, allowing to visualize the structure of thermal foci arising in a binder. The hardening of binding materials is considered as a multistage exothermic process, in which hydration processes is accompanied by heating. The speed of heterogeneous processes associated with hydration depends, in turn, on the characteristics of the forming structure of binding materials. The observed thermal processes are considered as an indirect response, "shadow" of structure formation processes. The information consisting in this indirect response, however, is enough to make a number of conclusions on the nature of the emerging structure. The study revealed a high probability of the formation of foci near the macroscopic boundaries of the section (walls and bottom of the form), inconsistency of the structural processes, the occurrence of diverse foci of structure formation corresponding to temperature foci. The interpretation of the data obtained is the conclusion about formation of the regions of high plastic deformations near the boundaries of the contact of the foci. This regions are considered as a cluster of microscopic boundaries of the section, cracks and pores, which give rise to the structure of the destruction of the hardened material. The emergence of such areas is associated with nonynchronouspassage of structuring in different parts of the binder.
ANALYSIS OF THERMAL EFFECTS WITH MULTI-FOCI STRUCTURING
