Fabrication of superhydrophobic concrete used in marine environment with anti-corrosion and stable mechanical properties

Abstract

Concrete is one of the wide used building materials in both marine engineering and architecture field. The first step of concrete structure deterioration is that corrosive medium invades into concrete. In this paper, a non-toxic fabricating method of superhydrophobic concrete with anti-corrosion and stable mechanical properties was proposed. Copper mesh and stearic acid were used to obtain the hierarchical micro-nano structure and low surface energy. The results indicate that the water contact angle and water slide angle of fabricated superhydrophobic concrete reached 159° and 5°, respectively. In addition, even after 60 s of mechanical polishing, the water contact angle was still greater than 150°. Moreover, compared with ordinary concrete, the anti-corrosion of fabricated superhydrophobic concrete was greatly improved. The fabricated environment-friendly superhydrophobic concrete with anti-corrosion and stable mechanical properties has important potential application value in the marine engineering.