Abstract
Cementitious structures have prevailed worldwide and are expected to exhibit further growth in the future. Nevertheless, cement cracking is an issue that needs to be addressed in order to enhance structure durability and sustainability especially when exposed to aggressive environments. The purpose of this work was to examine the impact of the Superabsorbent Polymers (SAPs) incorporation into cementitious composite materials (mortars) with respect to their structure (hybrid structure consisting of organic core—inorganic shell) and evaluate the microstructure and self-healing properties of the obtained mortars. The applied SAPs were tailored to maintain their functionality in the cementitious environment. Control and mortar/SAPs specimens with two different SAPs concentrations (1 and 2% bwoc) were molded and their mechanical properties were determined according to EN 196-1, while their microstructure and self-healing behavior were evaluated via microCT. Compressive strength, a key property for mortars, which often degrades with SAPs incorporation, in this work, practically remained intact for all specimens. This is coherent with the porosity reduction and the narrower range of pore size distribution for the mortar/SAPs specimens as determined via microCT. Moreover, the self-healing behavior of mortar-SAPs specimens was enhanced up to 60% compared to control specimens. Conclusively, the overall SAPs functionality in cementitious-based materials was optimized.
Highlights
Cementitious materials have been widely used over the years in the construction sector due to the cement abundance, its low cost and excellent durability [1,2]
The Gaussian deconvolution procedure of the Grey Scale Histograms (GSH) of all the mortar specimens examined in this work, showed that the minimum unhydrated cement phases (5%) were found in the case of the mortar-Superabsorbent Polymers (SAPs)-1 specimens, whereas the corresponding phases in mortar-reference (36%) and mortar-SAPs-2 (35%) were almost identical
The presented work, took into consideration the overall behavior of the mortarSAPs composites manufactured and examined. It comprises the determination of their mechanical properties, their microstructure evaluation, as well as the evaluation of their self-healing behavior yielding a series of conclusions
Summary
Cementitious materials have been widely used over the years in the construction sector due to the cement abundance, its low cost and excellent durability [1,2]. Aggressive environment conditions (i.e., wide ambient temperature fluctuation, rich presence of ions, pH levels etc.) combined with external loading favor crack propagation often leading to the formation of an interconnected crack network that allows corrosive factors to penetrate the structure and assault the reinforcement leading to its deterioration. This raises huge safety issues and makes maintenance and repair high priority concerns [6,7,8]
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