Simple approach to calculate chloride diffusivity of concrete considering carbonation

Abstract

Chloride diffusivity of concrete is a crucial material parameter for service life determination and durability designing of marine concrete. Many research works on this issue have been conducted, varying from empirical solutions obtained experimentally to image analysis, based on multi-scale modeling. One of the simple approaches is to express the chloride diffusivity of concrete by a multi-factor function, however, the influences of various factors on the chloride diffusivity are ambiguous. Furthermore, the majority of these research works have not dealt with the carbonation process of concrete, although this process affects the chloride diffusivity of concrete significantly. The purpose of this study is to establish a simple approach to calculate the chloride diffusivity of (non)carbonated concrete. The chloride diffusivity of concrete should be defined, based on engineering and scientific knowledge of cement and concrete materials. In this paper, a lot of parameters affecting the chloride diffusivity, such as the diffusivity in pore solution, tortuosity, micro-structural properties of hardened cement paste, volumetric portion of aggregate, are taken into consideration in the calculation of the chloride diffusivity of noncarbonated concrete. For carbonated concrete, reduced porosity due to carbonation is calculated and used for calculating the chloride diffusivity. The results are compared with experimental data and previous research works.