The Interface Effect in the Water Absorption in Ceramic Brick

AbstractThe analysis of moisture migration in building materials and elements is crucial for its behaviour knowledge also affecting its durability, waterproofing, degradation and thermal performance. Based on this breach it is intended to analyse the interface effect in the capillary process in ceramic brick. Ceramic brick is a common material in Portuguese exterior walls, where usually it has mortar joints. In the foremost cases, Portuguese exterior walls are multilayer walls with materials in perfect contact and/or with an air space. Knowing that, in this paper, an experimental research using samples to capillary tests are used considering four different cases: monolithic and three interfaces: perfect contact, air space and hydraulic continuity (mortar).Since a long time, moisture is one of the primary causes for the observed damage on the buildings envelope, increasing the importance of this research with the goal of controlling the real moisture migration process. This paper has two special purposes:(a) The analysis of ceramic brick capillarity coefficient without interfaces (monolithic) and with three different interfaces: perfect contact, air space and hydraulic continuity (mortar) and (b) The calculation of the hydric resistance in the interface that conditions the maximum flow transmitted FLUMAX. This value is an important input in numerical simulations with multilayer building components and is a parameter to be obtained experimentally.In the first weights the water front is lower than the interface position so it would be expected that the capillary coefficient, calculated for the first step, is not to much influenced by the interface. It is expected that the maximum flow transmitted – FLUMAX, in the three different interfaces, is lower to air space, higher to hydraulic continuity, being the perfect contact in the middl