Influence of Water Content on the Mechanical Behaviour of Limestone: Role of the Clay Minerals Content

The mechanical characteristics of various sedimentary stones significantly depend on the water content, where 70 % loss of their mechanical strengths can be observed when saturated by water. Furthermore, the clay fraction has been shown to be a key factor of their hydro-mechanical behaviour since it governs for instance the hydric dilation. This work aims at investigating the correlations between the clay mineral content and the mechanical weakening experienced by limestones when interacting with water. The experimental characterization focuses on five different limestones that exhibit very different micro-structures. For each of them, we present the determination of clay mineral composition, the sorption isotherm curve and the dependences of tensile and compressive strengths on the water content. It emerges from these results that, first, the sorption behaviour is mainly governed by the amount of smectite layers which exhibit the larger specific area and, second, the rate of mechanical strength loss depends linearly on the sorption capacity. Indeed, the clay fraction plays the role of a retardation factor that delays the appearance of capillary bridges as well as the mechanical weakening of stones. However, no correlation was evidenced between the clay content and the amplitude of weakening. Since the mechanisms whereby the strength decreases with water content are not clearly established, these results would help to discriminate between various hypothesis proposed in the literature.