Reply to the discussion by S. Diamond of the paper 'Effect of drying on cement-based materials pore structure as identified by mercury intrusion porosimetry: a comparative study between oven-, vacuum- and freeze-drying'

摘要

I would like to thank Dr. S. Diamond for his interest and valuable contribution. He has pointed out many key aspects concerning the applicability of mercury intrusion porosimetry (MIP) to cement-based materials. First of all, I would like to underline that the main purpose of the presented work was to recall and to show that for laboratory teams using the MIP as a routine technique, much attention has to be paid to the material preparation. The second one was to suggest a less damaging method to dry the specimens. Fundamentally, one cannot disagree with most of the points raised by Dr. S. Diamond concerning the inappropriate use of the MIP to obtain the pore size distributions of cementitious materials [1].