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The significance of pore liquid pressure and disjoining pressure on the desiccation shrinkage of cementitious materials

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Abstract

There are several conflicting opinions in the literature concerning the significance and role of bulk pore liquid pressure and disjoining pressure on the desiccation shrinkage of cementitious materials. While the applicability of the Kelvin–Laplace equation in fine pores (due to the unstable nanosized meniscus) has been questioned by some, disjoining pressure has been advocated to be the primary mechanism driving desiccation shrinkage in cementitious materials. In order to elucidate the proper contribution and understanding of these two mechanisms, a thermodynamics-based mechanistic approach has been utilized here to derive expressions for both the bulk liquid pressure and the disjoining pressure. The validity of the poromechanical approach to modeling shrinkage of a porous body has also been examined. It has been concluded that the determination of pore liquid pressure via the Kelvin–Laplace equation does not require the presence of a stable meniscus and is applicable to nanosized pores. As such, the pore liquid pressure is found to be the primary mechanism associated with the desiccation shrinkage of cementitious materials. While disjoining pressure does not induce any change in the bulk liquid stress during drying, it plays a significant role in counterbalancing the liquid pressure in the thin film separating the vapor phase from the pore wall, which justifies poromechanical shrinkage models that consider pressurization to occur only in the portion of the pores containing bulk pore liquid.

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Notes

  1. In fact, the English word capillary derives from the Latin root capillus, which translates directly as hair.

  2. As pointed out by Rajagopal [28], “pressure” is vaguely introduced in most texts without any proper attention or description of what it means. Common usage of the term pressure is typically applied to simple, linear fluids and gases that have a spherical stress state such that the each normal stress component of the stress tensor is equal in magnitude to the mean normal stress. In such cases, one might get away with ambiguity; not so here where the stress tensor of thin liquid films is proposed by Derjaguin to be nonspherical.

  3. Note that the relative humidity cannot be zero because at zero relative humidity the vapor and liquid cannot coexist. Also, a zero relative humidity blows the mathematical formulation.

  4. Unless the pore sizes change due to the precipitation of hydration products/dissolved ions, or dissolution of pore wall due to some chemical reaction, the contraction/expansion of the pore network due to shrinkage or swelling may cause negligible change in the pore dimensions.

  5. Surface tension is acting along the θ direction and therefore does not have any component in the radial direction.

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Acknowledgements

This research was partially supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1463926. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. The authors would like to thank G.W. Scherer for helpful discussion.

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  1. Zachry Department of Civil Engineering, Texas A&M University, 3136 TAMU, College Station, TX, 77843-3136, USA

    Syeda F. Rahman & Zachary C. Grasley

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Rahman, S.F., Grasley, Z.C. The significance of pore liquid pressure and disjoining pressure on the desiccation shrinkage of cementitious materials. Int J Adv Eng Sci Appl Math 9, 87–96 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12572-017-0186-5

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