Relationships Between Permeability, Porosity, Diffusion And Microstructure Of Cement Pastes, Mortar, And Concrete At Different Temperatures

Permeabilities to water and diffusion of ionic species in cementitious grouts, pastes and mortars are important keys to concrete durability. Investigations have been made of numerous materials containing portland and blended cements, and those with fine-grained filler, at room temperature and after prolonged curing at several elevated temperatures up to 90°C. These constitute part of studies of fundamental material relationships performed in order to address the question of long-term durability. In general, the permeabilities of the materials have been found to be low [many <10−8 Darcy (10−13 m·s−1)] after curing for 28 days or longer at temperatures up to 60°C. The results obtained at 90°C are somewhat more complex. In some sets of studies of blended cement pastes with w/c varying from 0.30 to 0.60 and cured at temperatures up to 90°C the more open-pore structure (at the elevated temperature and higher w/c) as evident from SEM microstructural studies as well as mercury porosimetry are generally correlated also with a higher permeability to liquid. The degree of bonding and permeability evident in paste or mortar/rock interfacial studies present somewhat more conflicting results. The bond strength (tensile mode) has been shown to be improved in some materials with increased temperature. The results of permeability studies of paste/rock couples show examples with similar low permeabilities, and some with increased permeability with temperature.Ionic diffusion studies also bring important bearing to understanding the effect of pore structure. The best interrelationships between chloride diffusion and pore structure appear to relate diffusion rate to median pore size. Similar results were found with “chloride permeability” test.