Water absorption into white cement mortars by capillarity

Author(s): Chunsheng Zhou, Fangzhou Ren, Wei Wang
Paper category: Proceedings
Book title: Proceedings on International RILEM Conference on Materials, Systems and Structures in Civil Engineering Conference segment on Moisture in Materials and Structures
Editor(s): Kurt Kielsgaard Hansen, Carsten Rode and Lars-Olof Nilsson
ISBN: 978-2-35158-178-0
e-ISBN: 978-2-35158-179-7
Publisher: RILEM Publications SARL
Publication year: 2016
Pages: 14 - 23
Total Pages: 10
Language : English

Abstract: Water transport property for cement-based materials is very critical and should be paid great attention in the quantitative analysis of durability and service life prediction. In this paper, the pore size distribution (PSD) of two white-cement mortars is quantified by Mercury Intrusion Porosimetry (MIP) and Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) techniques. Before and after capillary absorption, the storage characteristics and distribution profile of absorbed water are observed by NMR technique. Furthermore, the hydraulic diffusivity is derived from the measured water content profile and capillary sorptivity. It is found that the PSD determined from MIP and NMR show similar bi-model trends with some observable differences, which may be caused by the obvious difference of sample sizes. The capillary sorptivity can only capture the absorption ability of small capillary pores of radius about 5nm-300nm. In another aspect, it is difficult to accurately calculate the hydraulic diffusivity through the Bruce and Klute equation. While the Zhou model can be used instead to determine hydraulic diffusivity of exponential law with good accuracy for cement-based materials.

Online publication : 2016
Publication type : full_text
Public price (Euros) : 0.00