Long term effect of strength and durability performance of concrete containing sulphate reduction bacteria under chloride condition

Abstract

The chloride ingress in concrete cause deterioration in concrete due reinforcement corrosion. Adding bacteria in concrete can improve material properties and increase durability with mechanism resist chloride ingress in concrete. Chloride ingress in concrete by bacteria is particularly suited for applications in chloride ion penetration in concrete. The research is objective to determine the effect of adding bacteria to the concrete properties. The bacteria used is locally isolated and enriched to suite concrete environment. The type of the bacteria used is identified as Sulphate Reduction Bacteria (SRB). The SRB is added into concrete mix with concentrations of 3%, 5% and 7%. The compressive and water penetration tests at 28th, 56th, 90th, 180th and the 360th day of curing period were conducted. Cubes of size 150mm × 150mm × 150mm were prepared for compressive strength and water penetration tests. The result of compressive strength shows significant strength of 66.3 MPa on the 360 of day. The water depth penetration also shows a significant impact with addition of SRB with 80% reduction of penetrated water into concrete compared to the control specimen. The overall results of bacteria showed promising results and further study on chloride condition capability is encouraging. It can be concluded that SRB with 5% addition was the optimum percentage to obtain the optimum strength and durability performances.