Surface energy and wetting behavior on high-conditioned aggregates

Surface energy and its dispersive and polar components are considered good indicators of adhesion, cohesion and other mass-transfer phenomena where its behavior and dependency play a huge role in the determination of the total surface free energy. The main purpose of this paper is to describe the impact of surface topology on contact angle measurements and to study the behavior of the dispersive and polar components on the total surface free energy for industrial-relevant materials. Understanding this relationship will yield a great fundamental and practical basis for applications in heterogeneous solids such as limestone and gravel, two of the most used aggregates in construction and filling material. The dispersive component of the surface energy is the most wide-range contributor and its influence at high-energy regions becomes the main source of surface free energy, however the acidic component acts as a primary contributor at low-energy regions with steep a short-range participation, and the basic component can be considered as a mid-range contributor with a synergistic interaction with the acidic component. It should be noted that the aggregate surface sample is considered as a highly energetic surface implying that the surface conditioning has a great impact in terms of measurement’s reliability due to voids and topological imperfections.