Self-Healing of Aged Concrete Containing Crystalline Admixture and Expansive Agent under Repeated Loading
Publication: Journal of Materials in Civil Engineering
Volume 35, Issue 2
Abstract
While self-healing concrete has been increasingly studied this past decade, research on the self-healing of a crack after repeated loading is still scarce. Studying this topic is of utmost importance because structures in practice are subjected to repeated damage, causing a variety of crack openings. Hence, this paper presents an evaluation of the self-healing properties of aged concrete containing a combination of crystalline admixture (CA) and expansive agent (CSA), and submitted to repeated loading. Pre-cracked at 218 days old by means of a three-point bending test, the prisms were reloaded every three weeks and healed in wet/dry cycles in between. After two loadings, they were reloaded a third time until failure. Two types of reloading procedures were carried out: (1) reloading to the same residual crack width; and (2) reloading with increasing crack width. Self-healing was assessed with water permeability measures before and after each reloading, macroscopic observations of the cracks, and mechanical recovery. The results showed that two phenomena occurred with opposite effects: damage versus healing. The magnitude of both processes depends on the reloading procedure. When reloading to the same crack width, the damage effect was lower than the healing effect, indicating that the healing products provided sealing even after repeated loading. When reloading with an increasing crack width, the damage effect was greater than the healing effect, but the healing rates were higher than reloading to a constant crack width, because of the creation of new fresh crack surfaces that healed faster. In any case, multiple damage slows down healing but the self-healing process continues. This confirms the long-term healing potential of cracked structures made of, or repaired with, self-healing concrete.
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Data Availability Statement
All data, models, and code generate or used during the study appear in the published article.
Acknowledgments
This work was financially supported by the Discovery Grant of the Nature Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) research granted to Prof. J.-P. Charron and by a Ph.D Scholarship of the Quebec Research Fund on Nature and Technology (FRQNT) awarded to K.-S. Lauch. Material donations by Holcim, Euclid, Bekaert, Penetron and Denka are acknowledged. The authors are grateful to the technical staff of Polytechnique Montreal structural laboratory for their help in conducting the experimental program.
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Published In
Journal of Materials in Civil Engineering
Volume 35 • Issue 2 • February 2023
Copyright
© 2022 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Feb 16, 2022
Accepted: May 11, 2022
Published online: Nov 16, 2022
Published in print: Feb 1, 2023
Discussion open until: Apr 16, 2023
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