Chloride penetration into concrete using various cement types under flexural cyclical load and tidal environment

Abstract

Presented herein is a model to simulate the chloride ingress into plain concrete, using four common cement types, under flexural cyclical load and tidal environment. Flexural cyclic load was applied from 50 to 80% ultimate bending load, stress ratio (SR) = 0.5; 0.6; 0.7 and 0.8. Fictitious crack model was adopted to predict fatigue deformation of concrete beam under flexural fatigue. The four cement types used were Ordinary Portland cement (OPC), modified cement (MC), rapid hardening cement (RHC) and low heat cement (LHC). The proposed model and experimental results showed that the flexural cyclical load, in terms of the number of cycles, N, and the load level, SR, accelerated chloride penetration into concrete, especially with SR of 0.7 and 0.8. Of four common cement types, OPC is the best cement to retard the chloride penetration into concretes. The model predictions fitted well with experimental results when the crack density parameter, μ, and the tortuosity parameter, τ, were introduced.