Quantitative Characterization of Effective Porosity in Cement-Based Composite Materials

The method of the second intrusion mercury in MW was used to investigate the pore characteristics of hardened cement paste with w/c ratio 0.23, 0.35 and 0.53, respectively, in order to research the quantitative relationship between transport properties and pore characteristics in cement-based composite materials. The results show the second intrusion mercury could well determine the effective pore structure parameters, and effective porosity accounts for 25% to 50% of total porosity in cement paste. At the same time, the existence of the first and second peak in pore size distribution curves is confirmed by MW, such as, the first peak in hardened cement paste with water to cement ratio 0.53 is very distinct, however, with the decrease of water to cement ratio, the first peak gradually disappears. The pore diameter corresponding to the first and second peak is critical pore diameter of capillary pore and gel pore, respectively.