Thermal Characterization of Concrete and Cement Mortar from Construction Sites and Industrial Production Units in the City of Ouagadougou with a View to Standardization in Energy Certification

Abstract

The present study allowed to carry out a thermal characterization of concrete and cement mortar. Thermal tests were carried out with the KD2 Pro device, on concrete and mortar samples taken from twenty-six (26) construction sites of office buildings and two (2) industrial production units in the city of Ouagadougou. The tests were carried out on rectangular specimens after four weeks (4) of conservation on the site of construction or production of materials. This study seeks to determine the thermal properties of the materials, in particular the thermal conductivity, the thermal diffusivity and the thermal capacity of the samples, in the real conditions of execution of the buildings and environment. The thermal conductivity varies from 1.413 to 1.965 W/m•K, 0.940 -1.658 W/m•K and 0.703 -1.149 W/m•K respectively for concrete, cinder block mortar and plaster mortar. Regarding the other properties, especially the capacity and thermal diffusivity, the values vary respectively, from 1070.59 -1974.67 kJ/kg•K and (3.74 -6.70) × 10 −7 m 2 /s for concrete, from 1123.69 -1586.81 kJ/kg•K and (3.38 -5.65) × 10 −7 m 2 /s for plaster mortar and 1202.51 -1736.01 kJ/kg•K and (3.82 -7.36) × 10 −7 m 2 /s for the mortar of building blocks. The conductivity, capacity and thermal diffusivity of industrial mortar vary from 1.019 -1.229 W/m•K, 792.18 -1862.58 J/kg•K and (2.75 -6.80) × 10 −7 m 2 /s, respectively. Only the correlations made between the thermal properties and the density of the samples of the plaster mortar, give good relations namely R 2 = 0.9308 for the thermal conductivity, R 2 = 0.