Moisture evaluation of concrete pavement treated with hydrophobic surface impregnants

ABSTRACT

Despite excellent service history, concrete pavement faces accelerated deterioration due to water and chemical ingress through micro cracks and surface voids. Surface protection could be an inexpensive way of enhancing the durability of concrete pavement. This research focuses on evaluating the performance of three surface applied hydrophobic materials with different chemistries; fluoropolymer, silicate resin and sodium acetate crystallising material. Tests consisted of a microscopic study to assess the mechanism of treatment, contact angle and pendulum tests to evaluate the hydrophobicity and frictional properties of treatment respectively. Also, surface absorption and water intake tests were conducted to appraise the resistance of treatment to absorb water. It was found that all three materials are capable of developing a hydrophobic effect in concrete, but with different efficacy in reducing water absorption. The rate of water absorption was minimum for sodium acetate compared to fluoropolymer and silicate resin treatments. Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) analysis revealed different interaction approaches for the three materials with concrete.

KEYWORDS:

• Concrete pavement
• rigid pavement
• hydrophobic treatment
• surface impregnation
• water absorption
• fluoropolymers
• silicate resins
• sodium acetate
• crystallisation

Acknowledgement

Authors appreciate and acknowledge the assistance and support of the Experimental Technique Centre ETC at Brunel University London, for providing their facilities to be used in this study. Also, the authors acknowledge the help of Mr. Neil Macfadyen in the Civil Engineering Research Centre at Brunel University. The fruitful discussion with Dr. Omar Abo Madyan is highly appreciated. Finally, the first author would like to pay special thanks to Mutah University- Jordan for providing financial support to this project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.