Engineering Properties of Colorful Mortar with Inorganic Color Paste

Abstract

Color cement directly exposes the surface of a concrete building through concrete materials or adding color additives and other technologies to achieve a special aesthetic effect of the overall building’s appearance. The multifunctionality of materials is paid increasing attention with time. This study uses additional 5%, 10% and 15% inorganic color paste and 20% polyacrylic emulsion to colorize mortar, and discusses the fresh properties (slump, slump flow), hardened properties (compressive strength, flexural strength, tensile strength and ultrasonic pulse velocity and durability (surface resistivity, thermal conductivity and length change) of mortar. The results show that the slump and slump flow increase with the content of inorganic color paste; the slump flow is larger than the control group and larger than 25 cm, meaning the inorganic color paste can effectively enhance the workability of mortar. The compressive strength, flexural strength and tensile strength decrease as the inorganic color paste increases. The addition of 5% inorganic color paste still maintains certain engineering properties. The addition of polyacrylic emulsion can improve the tensile strength of mortar, which is higher than the control group. The ultrasonic pulse velocity is a little different from compressive strength, but they have similar trends, and it is higher than 3500 m/s. The durability decreases as the inorganic color paste and polyacrylic emulsion increase, meaning the content of inorganic color paste has relatively significant influence. The surface resistivity at the age of 7 days was higher than 20 kΩ-cm. The findings show that different contents of inorganic color paste and 20% polyacrylic emulsion have different degrees of influence on the engineering properties of colorful mortar.