ABSTRACT
The water absorption behavior plays an important role in assessing the durability performance of concrete structures. The oven drying at high temperature is a common pretreatment for concrete to reach dry state before absorption tests, whereas the concrete of existing structures remine at saturated or partially saturated states. This paper studies the effects of initial water content on the water absorption behavior of concrete. And the different water contents were achieved by drying concrete under atmospheric environment with different relative humidity at 23 °C. The result shows that the absorption rate increases with the initial water content of concrete decreasing. Finally, a transport model is established to predict the water absorption amount of concrete with different initial contents.
