Evaluating the Durability Assessment of Cementitious Materials Under Sulfate Attack

Abstract

This paper aims to evaluate whether the aforementioned method represents well the global expansion of the specimens. In the present experimental work, two mixtures of cylindrical cementitious materials exposed to sulfate solution are investigated. Those mixtures differ in the average size of coarse aggregates, yet have an identical specific surface area (SSA), which is the total surface of aggregates in a specimen. This attempt aims to isolate the effect of SSA in the sulfate attack mechanism, as the deterioration level is proportional to the SSA. An advance analysis was performed to observe deeply the phenomena experienced by the specimens, in micro, intermediate, and macro scales. The proposed analysis is also capable to predict the deterioration of the specimens such as mass variation, with excellent results. The results, like the most previous studies, show that the specimen with larger aggregates experienced more elongation. Interestingly, the other specimen, who’s the aggregates are smaller, presented a considerably greater expansion of the radius. The results prove that both specimens likely experienced an identical volumetric expansion but in different ways. Finally, this work suggests that observing expansion by only measuring the elongation should be evaluated.