Static hardness testing of porous building materials

Abstract

Hardness testing is considered to be the earliest method of material testing. For the measurement of hardness of stones and other porous solid materials mostly dynamic testing devices are applied in practice, however for scientific purposes indentation hardness tests are more suitable methods. In present research Brinell macro hardness tests and depth-sensing indentation (DSI) tests (aka. instrumented indentation tests, IIT) were performed on 15 different types of porous solid building materials, recording the complete loading-unloading responses. The studies have shown that earlier observations found in the literature for the Brinell hardness of concrete can be extended to all porous solid building materials.