Shrinkage and Sorption

This lecture features an interview with Natalia Alderete, a civil engineer specializing in concrete durability and sustainability. She discusses her research on water ingress in concrete structures, focusing on capillary transport and the anomalous behavior of cementitious materials. Natalia explains the physical evidence of swelling causing anomalous capillary water uptake, presents experimental results on deformations during imbibition, and discusses a model based on the swelling hypothesis. She also addresses open questions in the field, such as the role of non-deformable phases and long-term imbibition experiments.