Mechanism Research of Drying Shrinkage of Cement Pastes Based on the Contact Angle

Abstract

Capillary tention is one of the driving forces of shrinkage of cement-based materials, which is related to distribution of pore size, surface tension of pore water, contact angle of pore walls and so on. There are some appropriate test methods for pore diameter and surface tension of cement-based materials, but the contact angle of pore water is rarely related to. This paper showed a new method to test the contact angle of cement-based materials which is based on the principle of thin-layer wicking about surface physical chemistry. Combining Washburn equation x2=(Refft/2) , the contact angle of analog pore solution to cement paste was obtained. The influence of superplasticizers and mineral admixtures on the contact angle and drying shrinkage of cement pastes also were researched. The results showed that the larger contact angle leads to the smaller surface tension of pore solution, which also caused that the capillary wall wass infiltrated more difficultly. As a result, the pressure of pore and the drying shrinkage were both small, vice versa.