MODELING SULFATE ATTACK IN CONCRETE USING MIXTURE THEORY

Author(s): Chethan Gouder and U. Saravanan
Book Title: RILEM International Symposium on Concrete Modelling - CONMOD 2014
Editor: Kefei Li, Peiyu Yan and Rongwei Yang
ISBN: 978-2-35158-139-1
e-ISBN: 978-2-35158-140-7
Publisher: RILEM Publications SARL
Publication year: 2015
Pages: 416-423
Total Pages: 8
Language: English

Abstract: Concrete is made up of several chemical constituents. These constituents react with water and other chemicals made available by transport from its surroundings. Thus, concrete is in a state of dynamic equilibrium. Sulfate attack causes chemical and mechanical changes in the concrete. Though progress has been made towards understanding certain aspects of the mechanisms of sulfate attack, modeling of sulfate attack still remains a challenge. In this work, the theoretical framework of mixture theory is used to model sulfate attack. According to the tenants of mixture theory, concrete is assumed to be a constrained mixture of chemicals through which a fluid, another constrained mixture of chemicals, is transported. The theoretical framework allows not only the transport of the fluid through the solid, concrete, but also for the chemical reactions to happen. In this work, the chemical reactions between sodium sulfate and concrete proposed in the literature is used. Further, the mechanical problem is simplified by using the fact that concrete undergoes only small deformation. Thus, now we have a framework which satisfies the second law of thermodynamics and couples the chemistry and mechanics of the problem without using ad hoc equations.

Online publication: 2015
Publication Type: full_text
Public price (Euros): 0.00