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Mortars and plasters—how to characterise hydraulic mortars

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Abstract

Mortars are heterogeneous building materials whose raw materials, manufacturing processes and application conditions have evolved continuously throughout history. The fact that apparently small changes in the components or dosages of mortars can affect their overall performance in the masonry makes the study of historic mortars a complex task that needs to be tackled via a multidisciplinary approach, with the support of complementary analytical techniques from the field of chemistry, mineralogy, physics and engineering, among others. This review is intended to be a useful tool for researchers working in the field of archaeology and/or cultural heritage conservation, as it offers a complete overview of the most widely accepted analytical techniques and physical-mechanical tests used in the characterisation of historic mortars and plasters. Although the methods described here are common to both air-hardening and hydraulic mortars, we focus above all on the latter, paying special attention to aspects relating to the chemical, mineralogical and petrographic investigation of the calcium silicate and aluminate hydrated phases that may indicate the use of one or other hydraulic binder in historic mortars, all this taking into account and discussing the practical aspects, drawbacks and limitations of each technique. European standards for the study of mortars are also addressed in this paper.

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Notes

  1. According to Vitruvius and Morgan (1960), pulvis puteolana was (from the Latin) “a kind of powdery sand which by its nature produces wonderful results. (…) This material, when mixed with lime and rubble, not only furnishes strength to other buildings, but also, when piers are built in the sea, they set under water, (…) and neither the waves nor the force of water can dissolve them”.

  2. The EN 80305 2012 establishes a lightness value of L* ≥ 85 for white cements.

  3. It is worth highlighting that the EN 17187 standard recommends the application, in some cases, of methods that were initially intended for other types of building materials (mainly natural stone), but which are considered equally appropriate for the study of mortars. This is because of the heterogeneous features (e.g. mineralogy, porosity) of mortars, which make them similar to geological materials (although they are artificial) and explain why they are studied in a similar way (Artioli 2010), always bearing in mind the specific characteristics that make mortars different from any natural material (Pecchioni et al. 2018).

  4. From the Spanish: Microscopía No Intrusiva de Alta Resolución.

  5. Calcite, vaterite and aragonite are all polymorphs, i.e. mineral phases with the same chemical formula (CaCO3) but different crystalline structures.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Pablo Guerra García (National University of Distance Education, Spain) and Francesco Izzo (Group of Mineralogy and Petrography of the Department of Sciences and Technologies of the University of Sannio, Benevento, Italy) for providing some of the images. We thank Nigel Walkington for his assistance in revising the English used in the manuscript.

Funding

This study was funded by Junta de Andalucía Research Group RNM179; Research Project MAT2016-75889-R, Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness.

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  1. Department of Mineralogy and Petrology, Faculty of Sciences, University of Granada, Avda. Fuentenueva s/n, 18002, Granada, Spain

    Anna Arizzi & Giuseppe Cultrone

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  1. Anna Arizzi
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A. Arizzi and G. Cultrone decided together on the structure of the article; A. Arizzi wrote the text, which was then carefully revised and corrected by G. Cultrone.

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Correspondence to Anna Arizzi.

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Arizzi, A., Cultrone, G. Mortars and plasters—how to characterise hydraulic mortars. Archaeol Anthropol Sci 13, 144 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12520-021-01404-2

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