The Effects of Anisotropic Insulations with Different Spatial Distributions on Material Properties of Mortar Specimens

Insulating concrete is a material designed to reduce heat conduction with pores/insulations, and these pores strongly affect the material characteristics. In general, the insulation effect is directly proportion to the pore volume, while the material strength decreases as the porosity increases. To overcome this contrary, anisotropic insulations with different spatial distributions are proposed and investigated in this study. A set of mortar specimens with different arrangements of coin-shaped insulations are produced to examine the anisotropic insulation effect on the material characteristics. In addition, different types of insulation materials and their effect on the materials are also investigated here. X-ray computed tomography images and probabilistic description methods are used to confirm the arrangement of the insulations. The thermal and mechanical responses for different directions are investigated using both experimental and numerical methods. From the results, it is demonstrated that the use of anisotropic insulations for a specific direction can enhance the insulation efficiently as well as minimizing the loss of compressive strength.