Coupled Effects between Damage and Permeability with a View to Discrete Modelling

The purpose of this work is to achieve a better understanding of the relationship between mechanical damage and the transport properties of cementitious materials. In the literature, analyses are usually restricted to intrinsic permeability of the material and the evolution of the apparent permeability with respect to the pressure gradient and to the nature of the fluid considered are left aside. A new model capable to provide the apparent permeability of a porous material to gas, directly from the pore size distribution and from the properties of the gas is discussed. Comparisons with experimental data on mortar specimens show that the model can reproduce the intrinsic permeability and its evolution when the material is subjected to mechanical damage, provided the pore size distributions are available. For a given pore size distribution, the evolution of the apparent permeability is also provided and test data with several types of gases compare quite well with the model. © ASCE.