Permeability of Clay Concretes

Abstract

This paper presents an investigation on the effect of clay addition on water permeability and air permeability of concretes. Clay concrete mixes consisted of 0 to 40% clay content incorporated as cement replacement. Flow methods using triaxial cells and air permeameters were used for measuring the injected water and air flows under pressure. It was found that the higher the clay content in the mixture, the greater the permeability. At higher water-cement ratios (w/c), the paste matrix is less dense and easily allows water to ingress into concrete. But at high clay contents of 30 to 40% clay, the variation in permeability was significantly diminished among different concrete mixtures. It was confirmed that air permeability results were higher than the corresponding water permeability values when all permeability coefficients were converted to intrinsic permeability values.