Drying kinetics of self-compacting concrete

Authors: S. MALAB, A. BENAISSA, S. E. BOUDRAA, S. AGGOUN

Abstract: A comparative study of the drying kinetics of self-compacting concrete (SCC) with those of an ordinary concrete and sand concrete (SC) shows a monomodal porometry structure of the SCC with a peak located in the vicinity of 1000 Å (macropores), with, however, for SC a peak located in the vicinity of 250 Å (mesopores), whereas ordinary concrete (OC) presents a bimodal structure with 2 peaks: the first corresponds to micropores and the second to macropores. Another important and unexpected result is that SCC with macropores has lower drying kinetics than SC with mesopores. Furthermore, the SCC pores are more tortuous and less oriented with a lower degree of connectivity than SC. Concrete with limestone filler as SCC and SC has finer pores than conventional concrete.

Keywords: Self-compacting concrete, Porometry, Gammadensimetry, Drying kinetics, Sand concrete, Ordinary concrete.

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