A comprehensive multiscale moisture transport analysis: From porous reference silicates to cement-based materials

Natural and manufactured disordered systems are ubiquitous and often involve hierarchical structures. This structural organization optimizes defined physical properties at several scales from molecular to representative volumes where the usual homogenization approach becomes efficient. For studying a particular physical property on these systems it is thus required to use a general method of analysis based on the joint application of complementary techniques covering the whole set of time-and length-scales. Here we review a comprehensive multiscale method presented for analyzing the three-dimensional moisture transport in hierarchical porous media such as synthesized reference silicates and cement-based materials. Several techniques (NMR spectroscopy, relaxometry, diffusometry, X-ray micro-tomography, conductivity…) have been used to evidence the interplay between the different scales involved in this transport process. This method allows answering the general opened questions concerning the scale dependence of such a moisture transport in cement-based materials. We outline the main results of the multiscale techniques applied on reference porous silicates allowing separating the impact of geometry, hydric state and wettability on the moisture transport. Based on this approach, we prove that this transport at micro- and meso-scale is determinant to modify the moisture at macro-scale during setting or for hardened cement-based materials.