Comparative Study on Water Permeability of Concrete Using Cylindrical Chamber Method and British Standard and Its Relation with Compressive Strength

Abstract

Since the penetration of fluids (water, oil and chemicals) into concrete, plays a major role in the durability of concrete, this paper describes the effect of compressive strength of concrete on its permeability. Having revised the existing methods developed so far, the results of investigations into the permeability of different mixtures of concrete are presented. The results of the new method (cylindrical chamber method) used for the estimation of the permeability of 5 different strength grades concrete samples after different curing periods were compared with the comparative results obtained using British standard method (BS EN 12390-8:2009). These experiments tend to indicate a very good correlation between the two sets of results. Based on the test results, higher water/cement ratio and shorter curing period result in decreased compressive strength and increased permeability. The correlations between compressive strength and permeability parameters (penetration depth, average penetration flow velocity, permeability coefficient and penetration volume) are also investigated using a regression approach. It is concluded that power and second-order polynomial approximations can predict these correlations with a desirable accuracy.