The increase of water absorption in concretes containing higher
amount of EPS beads indicates an increase in internal porosity of
concretes which could be related to the presence of higher air bubbles
in the EPS contained concrete and microcracking resulted by
compression of EPS beads under the process of absorption test. In
concrete mixtures having high amount of EPS beads, the distance
between the grains and thus the thickness of matrix is very low.
Consequently, the reduction of EPS beads during the oven drying
for absorption test might lead to some microcracking of surrounding