In Egypt, prepacked commercial grouts tend to be used for repair of damaged structural elements, filling under base plates and fixing of anchor bolts. Four different prepacked commercial grouts, available in Egypt, were tested in order to assess their basic materials properties, e.g. water demand to give certain fluidity, setting time, compressive strength and water absorption. The results indicated that in spite of the fact that all grouts were introduced to the market as non shrink cementitious grouts, their studied properties were variable. It was found that, for the grouts tested, the coefficients of variation for the water demand, initial setting time, strength at 3 days and absorption after immersion at 28 days were 14.4%,48% , 17.5% and 2.6%, respectively. The advantages of using grouts as opposed to site mixed mortar were highlighted. For example grouts can achieve very high strength at an early age (more than twice that of the standard OPC mortar). On the other hand, grouts with similar strengths as the OPC standard mortar may have absorption values of only one third those of the OPC mortar. In order to choose a grout for a certain application, basic materials properties like those studied in this investigation should be specified to ensure that the grout used is suitable for its intended application and work conditions. |
