Case Studies on the Adhesion between Building Materials

The study of adhesion between construction materials is a vast subject with many implications. Understanding adhesion mechanisms and improving adhesion are essential to increase the service life of roads, but also to maintain the aesthetics of painted concrete facades. This article sets out to illustrate the use of a peeling methodology, including a flexible reinforcing membrane, combined with analysis of the surface chemical composition of fracture surfaces. This precise quantification of adhesion and correlation of peel forces with fracture surface analysis is already used to study adhesion of other types of materials (usually polymer-based), but is relatively little applied in the field of construction materials. The case studies presented in this article concern adhesion between two particular interfaces of construction materials (aggregate/bitumen and concrete/protective paint). Indeed, several similar parameters influence adhesion between these two pairs of materials: the roughness, porosity and composition (mineralogy) of the substrates (aggregate or concrete), but also the wettability and rheology of organic materials, etc.