The American Concrete Institute (ACI) has released a paper called Relating Formation Factor of Concrete to Water Absorption.
The paper, written by Mehdi Khanzadeh Moradllo, Chunyu Qiao, Burkan Isgor, Steven Reese, and W. Jason Weiss, says absorption of fluid concrete is a key parameter that can be related to many durability-related deterioration mechanisms. However, the current water absorption testing procedure (ASTM C1585-13) is time-consuming due to both sample conditioning and the test duration.
The study examined whether the formation factor can be used to estimate water absorption and greatly reduce the time of testing.
ACI says: “This paper describes the use of neutron radiography to examine water absorption in mortar mixtures with varying water-cement ratios (w/c) that have been preconditioned to two different moisture states (relative humidities).”
Theoretical derivations and experimental results indicated a linear relationship between initial sorptivity and the reciprocal of the square root of the formation factor.
“The experimental depth of water penetration was compared with a theoretical formulation and the results showed good agreement,” ACI adds.
