Estimating transport properties of mortars using image analysis on backscattered electron images

The pore structure of two ordinary Portland cement mortars at water–cement ratio of 0.35 and 0.70 was characterised using quantitative backscattered electron imaging. The mortars were cured and conditioned to produce a range of pore structure characteristics. Image analysis was used to characterise the pore structure in terms of simple morphological parameters such as resolvable porosity and the specific surface area. These were found to be correlated to measured transport coefficients (diffusivity, permeability and sorptivity), suggesting the feasibility of image analysis to derive valuable quantitative information describing the pore structure that can be used as input values for a transport prediction model. A simple analytical model incorporating tortuosity and constrictivity was used to predict oxygen diffusivity and a variant of the Kozeny–Carman model was used to predict oxygen permeability. The diffusion model tended to over-predict for the lower w/c ratio mortar, but the general agreement was reasonable, with 90% of the estimated values within a factor of two from the measured values. The modified Kozeny–Carman model, however, over-predicted all permeability values with an error of between half to one order of magnitude.