Materials Behavior & Characterization: Innovative technique for obtaining water absorption of fine aggregates and its relationship with the mineralogical characteristics and mechanical performance of mortars.
One of the aspects that directly affects the strength and durability of Portland cement mortars is retained water correction. In order to obtain the absorption rate on fine aggregates, many standard methods are applied, one of them is ASTM C128. However, this method presents certain variability in obtaining the absorption of fine aggregates. This research aims to compare, related to mineralogical characteristics, two methods: ASTM 128 and an innovative instrumental and analytical technique with thermogravimetric balance of halogen light (TBHL), coupled to a software that reads datas of water retained. Additionally, the strength of mortars is evaluated based on a retained water correction that allows correlating the adsorption and absorption percentage and the mechanical performance. The TBHL method results show less variability and higher precision than ASTM C128. In addition, time of execution of the test is reduced 25% and energetic consumption is approximately 14% less. When obtaining more accurate datas with TBHL is possible to make a better correction of the water cement ratio of mortars and thus improve their mechanical performance.
Keywords: Water absorption, halogen light, optimization of resources, Mortars, compressive strength.