Physical and Mechanical Properties of Cementitious Specimens Exposed to an Electrochemically Derived Accelerated Leaching of Calcium

Journal article, 2015

Simulating natural leaching process for cementitious materials is essential to perform long-term safety assessments of repositories for nuclear waste. However, the current test methods in literature are time consuming, limited to crushed material and often produce small size samples which are not suitable for further testing. This paper presents the results from the study of the physical (gas permeability as well as chloride diffusion coefficient) and mechanical properties (tensile and compressive strength and elastic modulus) of solid cementitious specimens which have been depleted in calcium by the use of a newly developed method for accelerated calcium leaching of solid specimens of flexible size. The results show that up to 4 times increase in capillary water absorption, 10 times higher gas permeability and at least 3 times higher chloride diffusion rate, is expected due to complete leaching of the Portlandite. This coincides with a 70 % decrease in mechanical strength and more than 40 % decrease in elastic modulus.