Relationship between the adhesive properties and the rheological behavior of fresh mortars
Nowadays, with the development of the construction industry, mortars are produced in factory by specifically designed dry-mix plants, in which mineral binders and aggregates are mixed together in the appropriate way. These dry-mix mortars (ready to use) are characterized by a very complex formulation involving various constituents. In addition to the basic components (cement, lime, sand), different additives and admixtures are often added in the mortar formulations to improve their characteristic and to achieve different technical properties. Indeed, when applying an adhesive mortar, the product must adhere to the application support instead of to the working tool. Depend on their application purposes, the usage of these additives and admixtures must be fully investigated in order to observe the most effective contributions. Based on current standards, the adhesive properties of cement-based mortars are often measured at the early age. However the adhesive properties of mortar is usually said to be open in a relatively short duration (several hours) depending on the type of the mortar used. It is therefore necessary to examine the evolution of adhesive properties in the fresh state as well as the rheological properties with the variation of polymer concentrations. An adhesive mortar in fresh state can be considered as a granular suspension in a complex fluid. The study of the rheological behavior of such materials involves the rheology of complex fluids, including granular suspensions, colloidal dispersions, etc. Many scientific questions still exist in this domain, for example: the problem of shear localization and interpretation of the corresponding rheological measurements. The investigation of these problems in the variation of different types of additives and admixtures help answer these questions. To characterize the rheological behavior of an adhesive mortar, in quasi-static regime, we use a three-parameter behavior law that includes a yield stress, a viscosity coefficient and a fluidity index. The adhesiveness of the mortar can be characterized by identifying the evolution of the adhesive force, the cohesive stress and the adherence force. The objective of this thesis is to determine the roles of various additives of organic origin (cellulose ethers, re-dispersible resins powders) and/or mineral (clays, silica fume, etc.) on the fresh state properties of these mortars, including their adhesive properties and rheological behaviors.