Essentially, when electrical current flows easily in concrete that has large pores filled with highly connective pore water, this is an indication of a low resistivity concrete. In concrete, the flow of current between anodic and cathodic sites on a steel reinforcing bar surface is regulated by the concrete electrical resistance. Therefore, deterioration of any existing reinforced concrete structure due to corrosion of reinforcement steel bar is governed, to some extent, by resistivity of concrete. Resistivity of concrete can be improved by using SCMs and thus increases the concrete electrical resistance and the ability of concrete to resist chloride ingress and/or oxygen penetration resulting in prolonging the onset of corrosion. After depassivation it may slow down the corrosion rate of the steel bar. This indicates the need for further study of the effect of electric arc furnace dust (EAFD) addition on the concrete resistivity. In this study, concrete specimens rather than mortars were cast with different additions of EAFD to verify the electrochemical results obtained and to try to understand the role of EAFD addition in influencing the corrosion behaviour of reinforcing steel bar embedded in concrete and its relation to the resistivity of concrete. The results of these investigations indicated that the corrosion resistance of steel bars embedded in concrete containing EAFD was improved, which may link to the high resistivity found in EAFD-concrete. In this paper, potential measurements, corrosion rates, gravimetric corrosion weight results and resistivity measurements will be presented and their relationships will also be discussed in details.

One of the main applications of FRP composites is confining concrete columns. Hence identifying the cyclic and monotonic stress-strain behavior of confined concrete columns and the parameters influencing this behavior is inevitable. Two significant parameters affecting the stress-strain behavior are aspect ratio and corner radius. The present study aims to scrutinize the effects of corner radius and aspect ratio on different aspects of stress-strain behavior of FRP confined concrete specimens (rectangular, square and circular). Hence 44 FRP confined concrete specimens were tested and the results of the tests were investigated. The findings indicated that for specimens with different aspect ratios, the relationship between the ultimate stress and the corner radius is linear and the variations of the ultimate stress versus the corner radius decreases as a result of an increase in aspect ratio. It was also observed that increase of the corner radius results in increase of the compressive strength and ultimate axial strain and increase of the aspect ratio causes an increase of the ultimate axial strain but a decrease of the compressive strength. Investigation of the ultimate condition showed that the FRP hoop rupture strain is smaller in comparison with the one obtained from the tensile coupon test and also the ultimate axial strain and confined concrete strength are smaller when a prism is under monotonic loading. Other important results of this study were, an increase in the axial strain during the early stage of unloading paths and increase of the confining effect of FRP jacket with the increase and decrease of the corner radius and aspect ratio respectively, a decrease in the slope of reloading branches with cycle repetitions and the independence of this trend from the variations of the aspect ratio and corner radius and also quadric relationship between the number of each cycle and the plastic strain of the same cycle as well as the independence of this relationship from the aspect ratio and corner radius.

The study presented herein aims to investigate the durability related properties of rubberized concrete. Two types of waste scrap tire rubber were used as fine and coarse aggregate, respectively. The rubber was replaced with aggregate by three crumb rubber and tire chips levels of 5, 15, and 25% for the rubberized concrete productions. In order to improve the transport properties and corrosion resistance of rubberized concretes, SF was replaced with cement at 10% replacement level by weight of total binder content. The transport properties of the rubberized concretes were investigated through water absorption, gas permeability, and water permeability tests. The corrosion behavior of reinforcing bars embedded in plain and silica fume based rubberized concretes was investigated by linear polarization resistance (LPR) test. The results indicated that the utilization of SF in the rubberized concrete production enhanced the corrosion behavior and decreased corrosion current density values. Moreover, the reduction in the water and gas permeability coefficients was observed by the incorporation of SF in plain and especially rubberized concretes.

The use of limestone fines (LF) in mortar and concrete can in certain ways improve performance and thus has become more and more commonplace. However, although LF is generally regarded as a filler, it is up to now not clear how much filling effect it could have and how best the filling effect could be utilized. Herein, the packing density and filling effect of LF were studied by measuring the packing densities of LF, (LF + cement) blends and (LF + cement + fine aggregate) blends under dry and wet conditions, and measuring the performance of mortars made with various amounts of LF added. It was found that the addition of LF would not significantly increase the packing density of (LF + cement) blends but would fill into the paste to increase the paste volume and paste film thickness, and improve the flow spread and strength of mortar.

A numerical study of the influence of shear-span/depth ratio on the cohesive crack fracture parameters and double - K fracture parameters of concrete is carried out in this paper. For the study the standard bending specimen geometry loaded with four point bending test is used. For four point loading, the shear - span/depth ratio is varied as 0.4, 1 and 1.75 and the ao/D ratio is varied from 0.2, 0.3 and 0.4 for laboratory specimens having size range from 100 - 500 mm. The input parameters for determining the double - K fracture parameters are taken from the developed fictitious crack model. It is found that the cohesive crack fracture parameters are independent of shear-span/depth ratio. Further, the unstable fracture toughness of double-K fracture model is independent of shear-span/depth ratio whereas, the initial cracking toughness of the material is dependent on the shear-span/depth ratio.