Designing Water-Repellent Concrete Composites Using Cheap Organic Materials

Abstract

In this paper, it was successfully established a novel and cheap water-proofing technique for protecting concrete from further damage caused by water leakage. This technique originated from the proper design and rational formulation of the materials including hydrophobic sand, silicon oil, tyre crumb rubber, and recycled motor oil. From this research, it can be seen that only one concrete showed hydrophobicity and all obtained concrete demonstrated significantly and in some cases extremely low water permeability relative to control concrete. To the best of current knowledge, this is the first paper, which studied the surface and water sorption properties of concrete modified by the addition of hydrophobic sand obtained by patented technology. The goniometer investigated the surface properties of the modified concrete. The results obtained including density, contact angle, change of weight, and maximum load capacity under high electro-hydraulic pressure were compared and discussed.