• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.28 no.2A
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• pp.297-304
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• 2008

It is well known that cracks in concrete decrease permeability and durability of concrete because cracks enhance the penetration of water or corrosive chemicals like as chlorides, carbon dioxides, sulfates and some others. But some of cracks in hardened cements may be sealed in case of contacting water. This phenomenon is called "self healing" and it has a close relation to hydration products newly formed on surfaces of cracks. Many studies on self healing in concretes commonly showed that CSH gel has been observed on crack surfaces. And some studies have reported that calcium hydroxides and ettringite were observed as well as CSH gel on crack surfaces. This study was carried out to investigate hydration products formed by self healing process and also examine the influence of waterproof admixture for concretes on self healing of cement. As a result of XRD, DSC, SEM and EDX analysis of crack surfaces, it was found that self healing of cement was related to CSH gel, calcium hydroxides and ettringite. And waterproof admixture increased fibrous (needle-like) hydration products which were in network form. It is estimated that such fibrous products are effective for self healing process of cement system.

• Journal of the Korea Concrete Institute
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• v.15 no.6
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• pp.778-784
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• 2003

The carbonation of concrete is one of the major factors that cause durability problems in concrete structures. The rate of carbonation depends largely upon the diffusivity of carbon dioxide in concrete. The purpose of this study is to identify the diffusion coefficients of carbon dioxide for various concrete mixtures. To this end, several series of tests have been planned and conducted. The test results indicate that the diffusion of carbon dioxide reached the steady-state within about five hours after exposure. The diffusion coefficient increases with the increase of water-cement ratio and decreases with the increase of relative humidity at the same water-cement ratio. The content of aggregates also influences the diffusivity of carbon dioxide in concrete. It was found that the diffusion coefficient of cement paste is larger than that of concrete or mortar. The experimental study of carbon dioxide diffusivity in this study will allow more realistic assessment of carbonation depth in concrete structures.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.101-114
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• 2008

Pressurized grouting is a common technique in geotechnical engineering applications to increase the stiffness and strength of the ground mass and to fill boreholes or void space in a tunnel lining and so on. Recently, the pressurized grouting has been applied to a soil-nailing system which is widely used to improve slope stability. Because interaction between pressurized grouting paste and adjacent ground mass is complicated and difficult to analyze, the soil-nailing design has been empirically performed in most geotechnical applications. The purpose of this study is to analyze the ground behavior induced by pressurized grouting paste with the aid of laboratory model tests. The laboratory tests are carried out for four kinds of granitic residual soils. When injecting pressure is applied to grout, the pressure measured in the adjacent ground initially increases for a while, which behaves in the way of the membrane model. With the lapse of time, the pressure in the adjacent ground decreases down to a value of residual stress because a portion of water in the grouting paste seeps into the adjacent ground. The seepage can be indicated by the fact that the ratio of water/cement in the grouting paste has decreased from a initial value of 50% to around 30% during the test. The reduction of the W/C ratio should cause to harden the grouting paste and increase the stiffness of it, which restricts the rebound of out-moved ground into the original position, and thus increase the in-situ stress by approximately 20% of the injecting pressures. The measured radial deformation of the ground under pressure is in good agreement with the expansion of a cylindrical cavity estimated by the cavity expansion theory. In-situ test revealed that the pullout resistance of a soil nailing with pressurized grouting is about 36% larger than that with regular grouting, caused by grout radius increase, residual stress effect, and/or roughness increase.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Building Construction
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.25-34
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• 2016

From 1990's, a study on the development of exothermic concrete, a concrete which electro-conductive material is mixed, has been proceeded. However, due to the difficulty of exothermic reproducibility of concrete specimen, the study has been unable to continuously carried out. Accordingly, this study was focused on developing an exothermic concrete for the purpose of snow-melting material. Cement paste and mortar specimens mixed with graphite, conductive metal powder and chemical admixture were made. The evaluation of exothermic performance and reproducibility was conducted under $-2^{\circ}C$ of low temperature. In addition, micro-chemical analysis was carried out to investigate a cause of exothermic reproducibility. As a test result, the specimen mixed with graphite and superplasticizer with air entrained showed the best exothermic performance and reproducibility. Through micro-chemical analysis, it is judged that polymer or methacrylic acid (MAA), the contents inside the superplasticizer with air entrained, gave exothermic reproducibility by generating the electrochemical reaction with graphite.

• International Journal of Concrete Structures and Materials
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.213-228
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• 2014

Alkali-activated binder (AAB) is recently being considered as a sustainable alternative to portland cement (PC) due to its low carbon dioxide emission and diversion of industrial wastes and by-products such as fly ash and slag from landfills. In order to comprehend the behavior of AAB, detailed knowledge on relations between microstructure and mechanical properties are important. To address the issue, a new approach to characterize hardened pastes of AAB containing fly ash as well as those containing fly ash and slag was adopted using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and energy dispersive X-ray spectra microanalyses. The volume stoichiometries of the alkali activation reactions were used to estimate the quantities of the sodium aluminosilicate (N-A-S-H) and calcium silicate hydrate (CSH) produced by these reactions. The 3D plots of Si/Al, Na/Al and Ca/Si atom ratios given by the microanalyses were compared with the estimated quantities of CSH(S) to successfully determine the unique chemical compositions of the N-A-S-H and CSH(S) for ten different AAB at three different curing temperatures using a constrained nonlinear least squares optimization formulation by general algebraic modeling system. The results show that the theoretical and experimental quantities of N-A-S-H and CSH(S) were in close agreement with each other. The $R^2$ values were 0.99 for both alkali-activated fly ash and alkali-activated slag binders.

• Journal of the Korea Concrete Institute
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• v.17 no.6 s.90
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• pp.939-946
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• 2005

The stiffness properties of heterogeneous concrete materials and their degradation were investigated at different-levels of observations with aids of the opportunities and limitations of multi-resolution wavelet analysis. The successive Haw transformations lead to a recursive separation of the stiffness properties and the response into coarse-and fine-scale features. In the limit, this recursive process results in a homogenization parameter which is an average measure of stiffness and strain energy capacity at the coarse scale. The basic concept of multi-resolution analysis is illustrated with one and two-dimensional model problems of a two-phase particulate composite representative of the morphology of concrete materials. The computational studies include the meso-structural features of concrete in the form of a hi-material system of aggregate particles which are immersed in a hardened cement paste taking due to account of the mismatch of the two elastic constituents.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Building Construction
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.281-289
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• 2015

Carbonation of concrete causes reduction of pH and subsequently causes steel corrosion for reinforced concrete structure. However, for plain concrete structure or PC product, it can lead to a decrease in porosity, high density, improvement of concrete, shrinkage-compensation. Recently, based on this theory, research of $CO_2$ curing effect has been performed, but it was mainly focused on its effects on compressive strength using only ordinary portland cement. Researches on $CO_2$ curing effect for concrete containing $CO_2$ reactive materials such as ${\gamma}-C_2S$, MgO haven't been investigated. Therefore, this study has performed experiments under water-binder ratio 40%, and the replacement ratios of ${\gamma}-C_2S$ and MgO were 90%. Micro-chemical analysis, measurement of compressive strength according to admixtures and $CO_2$ curing were investigated. Results from this study revealed that higher strength was measured in case of $CO_2$ curing compared with none $CO_2$ curing for plain specimen indicating difference between 1.08 and 1.26 times, in case of ${\gamma}-C_2S$ 90, MgO 90 specimen, incorporating high volume replaced as much as 90%, it was proven that when applying $CO_2$ curing, higher strength which has difference between 14.56 and 45.7 times, and between 6.5 and 10.37 times was measured for each specimen compared to none $CO_2$ curing. Through micro-chemical analysis, massive amount of $CaCO_3$, $MgCO_3$ and decrease of porosity were appeared.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.14 no.11
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• pp.5947-5955
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• 2013

This study was intended to estimate the axial deformation of joint between pavement modules in the rapid-constructible modular pavement system, and to investigate the applicability of two-phase composites for a joint material, which was composed of cement paste, epoxy, or polyurethane as a matrix and sand as particles. A case which had supports under the pavement module as well as a case which the module was put on roadbed directly were considered in FEM analysis for the axial deformation. The effect of self-weight, live load, thermal change, and drying shrinkage were estimated and the thermal change was found to cause the largest deformation compared to the others. Deformation capacity of two-phase composites was predicted using the modified shear-lag model. In the analytical results for the elastic modulus and maximum tensile strain with different volume fractions of sand, 20~30 % replacement of sand was revealed to satisfy the required strain capacity with economy when if the width of joint was designed to be 15~20 mm.

• Proceedings of the Korea Concrete Institute Conference
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• 2008.04a
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• pp.1077-1080
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• 2008

Material parameters such as surface chloride content, water permeability coefficient, chloride diffusivity and critical chloride content are a substantial key parameter for understanding the durability performance of concrete and its micro-structural densification. Over the past few decades, a considerable number of studies on the durability design for marine concrete structures have been carried out. However, the results are different to each other. In order to establish a consistent durability design system of concrete, it is a precondition to define material parameters, which affect deterioration of concrete due to chloride penetration. Such parameters are surface chloride content, chloride diffusivity, and critical chloride content. Usually these parameters are assumed as temporary constant values or obtained from the experimental results for short term. However, it is necessary to define these parameters reasonably, because these significantly influence the calculation of service life of concrete. In this paper, it is introduced to define material parameters of concrete for chloride diffusion, such as surface chloride content $[Cl]_s$, water permeability coefficient K, chloride diffusivity $D_{Cl}$, critical chloride content $[Cl]_{cr}$. These are expressed as time function considering hydration evolution of hardened cement paste. The definition of the material parameters is a prerequisite to simulate chloride penetration into concrete as time elapsed.

• Journal of the Korea Concrete Institute
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.531-537
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• 2009

In this study alkali reactivity of crushed stone was conducted according to the ASTM C 227 that is traditional mortar bar test, and C 1260 that is accelerated mortar bar test method. The morphology and chemical composition of products formed in mortar bar, 3 years after the mortar bar tests had been performed, were examined using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) with secondary electron imaging (SEI) and electron probe microanalysis (EPMA) with backscattered electron imaging (BSEI). The crushed stone used in this study was not identified as being reactive by ASTM C 227. However, mortar bars exceeded the limit for deleterious expansion in accelerated mortar bar test used KOH solution. The result of SEM (SEI) analysis, after the ASTM C 227 mortar bar test, confirmed that there were no reactive products and evidence of reaction between aggregate particles and cement paste. However, mortar bars exposed to alkali solution (KOH) indicated that crystallized products having rosette morphology were observed in the interior wall of pores. EPMA results of mortar bar by ASTM C 227 indicated that white dots were observed on the surface of particles and these products were identified as Al-ASR gels. It can be considered that the mortar bar by ASTM C 227 started to appear sign of alkali-silica reaction in normal condition. EPMA results of the mortar bar by ASTM C 1260 showed the gel accumulated in the pores and diffused in to the cement matrix through cracks, and gel in the pores were found to be richer in calcium compared to gel in cracks within aggregate particles. In this experimental study, damages to mortar bars due to alkali-silica reaction (ASR) were observed. Due to the increasing needs of crushed stones, it is considered that specifications and guidelines to prevent ASR in new concrete should be developed.