Evaluation of Durability and Properties of Construction Materials Through a Multianalytical Approach: Case Study on Industrial Floor

Laboratory tests of materials and building elements represent a set of fundamental activities in the field of engineering and building materials. They are mainly used to verify materials behavior and performances, and to evaluate their conformity and durability for several applications. Durability of materials, especially in building construction field, is a crucial property which is continuously studied nowadays, on which huge attention and research are focused. It is well known that the increasing of materials durability leads to the increase of sustainability, favoring concepts as circular economy, reuse of resources, as well as the decreasing of the construction waste. However, durability could be compromised by several factors influencing the aging of materials, because of natural degradation phenomena which continuously occur. Therefore, several different factors have to be considered during investigation activities, including external context such as environmental parameters. The case study reported in the present article was examined by a multianalytical approach including non-destructive structural tests (NDT), geognostic and materials chemical-physical investigations, focused on the inspection and assessment of an industrial floor subjected to structural damage. Through this paper, laboratory chemical-physical analyses are reported and discussed, in order to evaluate the conformity of materials used, with the possibility to hypothesize the reasons contributing to the problem suffered by the structure investigated.