Maria Karoglou

Water Sorption Isotherms of Some Building Materials

Abstract: Moisture is one of the most deteriorating factors of buildings. The masonry moisture content depends on hygroscopic equilibrium between building materials and environment. Moisture sorption (adsorption and desorption) isotherms of 4 sandstones, 2 bricks, and 6 plasters were determined at 15, 25, and 35°C. A modified Oswin equation was used to predict experimental data for water activity in the range between 0.03 and 0.90. The hysteresis phenomenon between adsorption and desorption was observed for all the examined materials and classified at various isotherm types. A correlation of the hysteresis type with the microstructural characteristics of the materials was attempted.

Drying kinetics of some building materials

Moisture is one of the most deteriorating factors of buildings. The deteriorating effect of moisture occurs mainly during the drying phase, and not in the wetting phase. Appropriate parameters of the drying kinetics are required for the building materials. Environmental factors, such as air temperature, air humidity, and air velocity affect drying. An experimental air dryer of controlled drying air conditions was used to investigate the drying performance of 4 stone materials, 2 bricks and 7 plasters. Drying kinetics was examined at 4 air temperatures, 6 air humidities, and 3 air velocities. A first-order kinetics model was obtained, in which the drying time constant was a function of the drying conditions, and the equilibrium material moisture content was described by the Oswin equation. The parameters of the proposed model were found to be affected strongly by the material and the drying air conditions. The results obtained are very useful in selecting the appropriate plaster to protect existing historic buildings.

Correlation of Water Vapor Permeability with Microstructure Characteristics of Building Materials Using Robust Chemometrics

This paper studies various microstructure parameters of natural and artificial building materials and aims to their correlation to the water vapor permeability. Three categories of building materials were investigated: stones, bricks, and plasters. Mercury intrusion porosimetry was applied in order to obtain the materials microstructure characteristics, a variety of pore size distributions and pore structure measurements, such as total porosity. The water vapor permeability of materials was determined experimentally according to ASTM standard E96-00. A robust principal component regression approach, coupled with multiple outlier detection, was applied in order to correlate water vapor permeability values to pore size distributions. A good quality correlation model was found by utilizing relative specific pore volume and relative specific pore surface distributions, whereas using pore structure measurements, such as total porosity, the correlation results were very poor. From the results, specific ranges of pore size distribution, corresponding to pores radius sizes greater than

Moisture Transfer Kinetics in Building Materials and Components: Modeling, Experimental Data, Simulation

10\,\upmu \text{ m }

HygroScope: A Moisture Transfer Simulator for Buildings

10μm and between 1.778 and

Life cycle analysis of mortars and its environmental impact

0.421\,\upmu \text{ m }