Water behaviour of a lime mortar treated with consolidants

Abstract eng:
Consolidation is a conservation treatment with good potential to be applied to ancient renders, provided that the alterations in the properties of the original mortars remain within certain limits. The specificity of the ancient mortars characteristics, with a weak strength and a high porosity, is an important cause of their deterioration, but huge alterations in these properties will raise incompatibility problems with masonries, which will result in damage.The purpose of the article is to assess the alteration of some physical properties (porosity, density, water absorption by capillarity and water vapour permeability) promoted by four consolidation treatments applied on a lime mortar formulation, in order to deepen the water behaviour in non-hydraulic lime mortars treated with consolidant products.The article presents results obtained with 2 inorganic products (barium hydroxide and calcium hydroxide nanoparticles) and 2 ethyl silicate based products applied by capillarity on a lime mortar similar to the ones frequently present in the finishing layer of ancient renders.Characterisation tests were performed on treated and untreated samples to assess the variation of physical properties promoted by the tested consolidation treatments. All the consolidants induced slight differences on the tested physical properties of the lime mortar, whith the exception of one ethyl silicate based product, which lead to a significant alteration in all tested properties.

• Export as: BibTeX | MARC | MARCXML | DC | EndNote | NLM | RefWorks
• Add to your basket