Enhancing the hydrophobicity of cement-based materials by fabricating microstructured surfaces: Experimental and numerical study

Abstract

In cold and humid regions, deterioration and failure of concrete structures are usually closely related to the entry of external water. Increasing attention is being paid to hydrophobic surfaces to reduce the entry of external water and thus improve the durability of concrete structures. In this manuscript, the effect of microstructure on the surface hydrophobicity of hydrophobic rubberized concrete was investigated by wettability tests, and the optimal microstructure morphology that can further improve the surface hydrophobicity was derived. In addition, the multiple-relaxation-time lattice Boltzmann method was used to investigate the wettability of microstructured surfaces of hydrophobic rubberized concrete, and the effect of different microstructures on the contact angle of water droplets on concrete surface was investigated by numerical simulations. The predicted results obtained from the numerical simulations were compared with the analytical and experimental results to verify the accuracy of the numerical models.1.