Study about the capillary absorption and the sorptivity of concretes with Cuban limestone aggregates

Abstract

The objective of this study was to demonstrate the possibility to obtain concretes in Cuba with values of effective porosity below of 10%, using limestone aggregates with high levels of absorption (higher than 1% in many cases), and values of Sorptivity below of 5 x 10-5 m/s1/2 as is established in the document prepared by the DURAR Latin Working Group, for structures exposed to very aggressive environments. The experimental results showed that the use of the trial method of capillary absorption of Göran Fagerlund, were obtained concretes with effective porosity below of the 10%, for water/cement ratios of 0.4 and 0.45, but the values of sorptivities were very high. Nevertheless the subsequent use of the trial method of the ASTM C1585, that use cylinders probes with bigger depth and different processing, permits to obtain the desired sorptivity values for water/cement ratios of 0.4 and 0.45 whenever would be fulfilled the Good Practices of the Construction.

Keywords

• concrete
• limestone aggregate
• transport properties
• permeability
• durability