Effect of temperature on water capillary rise coefficient of building materials

• Published in: Building and environment Vol. 106; pp. 402 - 408
• Main Authors: Karagiannis, N., Karoglou, M., Bakolas, A., Moropoulou, A.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier Ltd 01-09-2016
• Subjects: Building materials; Capillary rise; Sorptivity; Temperature; Temperature; Sorptivity; Building materials; Capillary rise
• ISSN: 0360-1323; 1873-684X
• DOI: 10.1016/j.buildenv.2016.07.008

The presence of water is one of the main decay factors in buildings. Capillarity is the most usual mechanism of water penetration into building materials in liquid phase. Free capillary water uptake experiment, utilized for the estimation of the capillary rise coefficient Aw, a crucial hygrothermal materials property, is widely used for the characterization of building materials.
The main aim of this work was to investigate the effect of temperature on the capillary water absorption coefficient. Different categories of building materials such as stones, bricks and mortars of various compositions, for three different levels of air temperature (20, 25 and 30 °C) were studied. A linear dependence of the capillary water absorption coefficient with temperature was found for all examined materials, however with different slope values for each material. In order to assess the validity of the linear dependence of the capillary water absorption coefficient on the temperature, capillary rise experiments were performed at the temperature of 15 °C and a very good agreement between experimental and predicted values of the Aw was obtained. Finally, other models correlating the capillary water absorption coefficient Aw with temperature suggested by other researchers were evaluated.
•The effect of temperature on capillary water absorption coefficient of various building materials was investigated.•A linear correlation between capillary rise coefficient and temperature was established.•An evaluation was made comparing our linear regression equations with other researchers' models.