Mechanical behavior and chemical durability of marble-based mortar: Application to panels subjected to punching

Abstract

The main purpose of this paper is to use marble as sand in the mortar composition and to study the impact of natural sand replacement on mortar properties, such as mechanical strength, rheology and durability of different mortar mixtures at different curing ages up to 56 days. Natural sand (NS) was substituted by marble sand at different percentages (0%, 30%, 50%, 70% and 100% by weight of NS). The fresh property (workability), hardened properties (compressive, flexural and punching strength), compactness (ultrasonic wave speed) and durability (acid and water resistance) of the mortars studied were evaluated. A complementary study on mechanical behavior of panels elaborated with the studied mortars has been conducted; the test results have shown that mortar with 50% and 100% of substitution rate give better results for compactness, compressive and flexural strength. The punching strength obtained by the punching shear test has been significantly improved by the increase of natural sand substitution rate. However, panels carried out marble-based mortars with 70% of marble sand have given a punching strength similar to that obtained by control mortar panel (100% natural sand). This result has been also proven by the improvement of the mechanical behavior of slab made with 100% marble mortar. Results of durability estimated by acid attack have shown that loss in weight of mortar mixtures decreases with the increase of the percentage marble sand. Whereas, beyond 50% of marble sand content, water permeability increases compared to that of mortar control