Studies on the Strength of Cement Mortars with Surface Crosslinked cPSA Absorbent

To study the effect of surface crosslinked layer on the crosslinked poly(sodium acrylate) (cPSA) absorbent, we synthesized several surface crosslinked cPSAs with 5, 10 and 20 g of ethylene glycol dimethacrylate (EGDMA) by an inverse emulsion polymerization method to delay the absorption of excess water in concrete. We measured the compressive and flexural strength of mortars having 0.5, 1.0 and 1.5 wt% cPSA-EGDMA. We observed the increase of compressive and flexural strength of the cPSA-EGDMA added cement mortars except for the 0.5 wt% cPSA-EGDMA (20 g) added cement mortar. 1.0 wt% cPSA-EGDMA (5 g) added cement mortar showed about 16% and 10% increased compressive and flexural strength than those of plain cement mortar. To study the effect of porosity on compressive and flexural strength, we used FE-SEM and porosimeter. FE-SEM analysis showed swollen cPSMA-EGDMA (5 g) filled between calcium silicate hydrate (C-S-H) crystals. We observed the decreased porosity of the cPSA-EGDMA added cement mortars than that of plain cement mortar. 1.0 wt% cPSA-EGDMA (5 g) cement mortar showed the lowest porosity of 16.5%.