ABOUT THE INTERNATIONAL CONCRETE ABSTRACTS PORTAL

  • The International Concrete Abstracts Portal is an ACI led collaboration with leading technical organizations from within the international concrete industry and offers the most comprehensive collection of published concrete abstracts.

International Concrete Abstracts Portal

  


Title: Corrosion and Service Life Estimates for Internally Cured Concrete

Author(s): Kambiz Raoufi and W. Jason Weiss

Publication: Symposium Paper

Volume: 290

Issue:

Appears on pages(s): 1-16

Keywords: corrosion, cracking, internal curing, lightweight aggregate, restraint.

DOI: 10.14359/51684180

Date: 9/14/2012

Abstract:
High performance concrete (HPC) mixtures may be prone to early-age cracking. While uncracked HPC can protect steel reinforcement from corrosion reasonably well, cracking can dramatically accelerate the corrosion of reinforcement and reduce the service-life of structures. Several approaches have been developed to reduce the risk of cracking. One of these approaches is internal curing (IC) which uses prewetted lightweight aggregate. This paper describes a series of experiments performed using full-scale restrained concrete elements in an effort to quantify the performance of internally cured concrete on reducing the early-age shrinkage cracking thereby increasing the resistance to corrosion. The results show that concrete made using internal curing experienced a slight swelling at early-ages and experienced very little shrinkage. As a result the IC concrete did not crack while the conventional concrete cracked. Upon exposure to a chloride solution, extensive and nearly immediate corrosion activity was detected in the plain specimen while the internally-cured concrete did not exhibit any cracking or signs of corrosion during the time of this study (approximately 1 year). The benefits of internal curing are reduced cracking as well as reduced transport properties.