Study of hygral behavior of non-asbestos fiber cement made by similar hatschek process

Abstract

Fiber cement, similarly to all cementitious materials, undergoes dimensional and volumetric changes when it is exposed to dry and wet environments. When exposed to natural weathering, cement-based materials absorbs and may also release water to their surroundings via a very complex inherent pore structure. In this work initialized a few years ago, some properties of asbestos-free fiber cement composites were studied, such as density, porosity and loss or absorption of water. For the understanding of the behavior of this material, modifiers were employed in the cement matrix such as styrene-acrylic, styrene-butadiene and vinyl acetate-versatic vinylester copolymers to verify their influence on the variables described above. All composites were analyzed by mercury intrusion porosimetry (MIP). For monitoring the expansion/shrinkage movements, the specimens were exposed inside a controlled environmental chamber with constant temperature and relative humidity (RH) during the test time. The results showed no interference on hygral behavior because particular casting process of these composites but, as showed by literature, increase of toughness. Also, it was possible to verify that moisture movement within the asbestos-free fiber cement can be very complex and the variables density and porosity (pore structure) play a very important role in the expansion/shrinkage properties of these composites.