Fast Saturating of Concrete

[Conqueritman]

Hello concrete experts,
I took a few hundred 4*8 in cylindrical concrete cores from various bridge decks in Michigan. I need to fully saturate them with water in a short period of time.
Could you please suggest a method or trick to saturate them as quick as possible?
I can't submerge them in water bath because it takes days or sometimes weeks to fully saturate all the pores.
Thanks.

 

[Ron]

Put them under vacuum as you submerge them

 

[darthsoilsguy2]

if you were a Lightweight Concrete Producer.... you would put a sprinkler head over the aggregate pile for a few hours and scratch your head when you lose 3-inches of slump out the end of the pump.
j/k. it's been a week so advice window has passed.
i did want to lay a bet on what happened....
you discussed Ron's with the Client and shaped the conversation with "well, it's not really per the ASTM.... but we could do this" to give the Client a reason to justify not spending the money on making you do something very annoying. You ended up agreeing to taking measurements twice... tomorrow (monday 11/24) and then again 14 days later as follow-up.
did i win a prize?

 

[Conqueritman]

Ron, thanks for your advice, vacuum actually helped to some extent but it's not still short enough. Given the complex pore structure of concrete I don't know if it is feasible scientifically to saturate such porous media in a short amount of time.

if you were a Lightweight Concrete Producer.... you would put a sprinkler head over the aggregate pile for a few hours and scratch your head when you lose 3-inches of slump out the end of the pump.
j/k. it's been a week so advice window has passed.
i did want to lay a bet on what happened....
you discussed Ron's with the Client and shaped the conversation with "well, it's not really per the ASTM.... but we could do this" to give the Client a reason to justify not spending the money on making you do something very annoying. You ended up agreeing to taking measurements twice... tomorrow (monday 11/24) and then again 14 days later as follow-up.
did i win a prize?

hahaha almost my case. However it's an ongoing project and we need to dry/saturate/test/dry agagin several times. So share with me if you've got an idea.

 

[concretemasonry]

One suggestion is a little off the wall, but autoclaves can be very effective in saturating and drying of solid concrete samples.

In a previous life, I worked for a concrete block producer and we had a very good relationship with a mufti-location testing lab company and did some work for the lab. They trying to investigate the ultimate strength of concrete that may have been subjected to freezing. They would deliver samples and we would subject them to our normal curing cycle that was 30 minute rise in saturated steam to 365F (150 psi) followed by a soaking period at 100% saturation of about 5 hours and then a 45 minute blow-down to make crate a concrete product that went through a curing cycle (while saturated at elevated temperatures) to create results that could be correlated to ultimate strengths. A cycle would usually be 5,000 block (about 200,000#). This subjected samples (at 30% moisture)to being saturated for curing to proceed, held for period of time under pressure and then dried to about 2% moisture.

It is a unique process if you can find a facility to do the preparation for testing. - Correlation of results would be a challenge since the cement reaction at elevated temperatures is somewhat different.

Dick

Engineer and international traveler interested in construction techniques, problems and proper design.