Pore Structure Damages in Cement-Based Materials by Mercury Intrusion: A Non-Destructive Assessment by X-Ray Computed Tomography.

Mercury intrusion porosimetry (MIP) is questioned for possibly damaging the micro structure of cement-based materials (CBMs), but this theme still has a lack of quantitative evidence. By using X-ray computed tomography (XCT), this study reported an experimental investigation on probing the pore structure damages in paste and mortar samples after a standard MIP test. XCT scans were performed on the samples before and after mercury intrusion. Because of its very high mass attenuation coefficient, mercury can greatly enhance the contrast of XCT images, paving a path to probe the same pores with and without mercury fillings. The paste and mortar showed the different MIP pore size distributions but similar intrusion processes. A grey value inverse for the pores and material skeletons before and after MIP was found. With the features of excellent data reliability and robustness verified by a threshold analysis, the XCT results characterized the surface structure of voids, and diagnosed the pore structure damages in terms of pore volume and size of the paste and mortar samples. The findings of this study deepen the understandings in pore structure damages in CBMs by mercury intrusion, and provide methodological insights in the microstructure characterization of CBMs by XCT.