Physical Model of the Capillary Absorption in Cementitious Materials, New Approach to Calculate Analytically the Pore Size Distribution from the Gravimetric Test

Author(s): Luis Saucedo-Mora, Carmen Andrade, Sandra Cabeza and Dietmar Meinel
Paper category: Proceedings
Book title: Proceedings of International Conferences (ICACMS) Advances in Construction Materials and systems Vol 2
Editor(s): Manu Santhanam, Ravindra Gettu, Radhakrishna G. Pillai, Sunitha K. Nayar
ISBN: 978-2-35158-194-0
e-ISBN: 978-2-35158-191-9
Publisher: RILEM Publications SARL
Publication year: 2017
Pages: 448-451
Total Pages: 4
Language : English

Abstract: The capillary absorption experiment on cement and concrete is very simplistic and widely accepted by the scientific community. Nowadays it is mainly used for the determination of the capillary porosity of a material, and from theoretical models to extract information about the average pore size. This, with the permeability and pore size distribution obtained with the water permeameters and mercury intrusion porosimeters, respectively, can characterize the behavior of the material regarding to the water penetration. In this work, we propose a model capable to interpret physically the wetting part of the absorption test in order to extract solely from this experiment valuable information such as the permeability, porosity and pore size distribution. Computer tomography is used to validate the physical model, and three examples of cement pastes with different water/cement ratios are shown to validate and demonstrate the potentiality of this new technique.

Online publication : 2017
Publication type : full_text
Public price (Euros) : 0.00