• Advances in concrete construction
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• v.5 no.6
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• pp.671-683
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• 2017

Commonly used concrete in general, consists of cement, fine aggregate, coarse aggregate and water. Natural river sand is the most commonly used material as fine aggregate in concrete. One of the important requirements of concrete is that it should be durable under certain conditions of exposure. The durability of concrete is defined as its ability to resist weathering action, chemical attack or any other process of deterioration. Durable concrete will retain its original form, quality and serviceability when exposed to its environment. Deterioration can occur in various forms such as alkali aggregate expansion, freeze-thaw expansion, salt scaling by de-icing salts, shrinkage, attack on the reinforcement due to carbonation, sulphate attack on exposure to ground water, sea water attack and corrosion caused by salts. Addition of admixtures may control these effects. In this paper, an attempt has been made to replace part of fine aggregate by tailing material and part of cement by fly ash to improve the durability of concrete. The various durability tests performed were chemical attack tests such as sulphate attack, chloride attack and acid attack test and water absorption test. The concrete blend with 35% Tailing Material (TM) in place of river sand and 20% Fly Ash (FA) in place of OPC, has exhibited higher durability characteristics.

• Advances in concrete construction
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.117-143
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• 2017

The attack of environmental aggressive agents progressively reduces the structural reliability of buildings and infrastructures and, in the worst exposition conditions, may even lead to their collapse in the long period. A change in the material and sectional characteristics of a structural element, due to the environmental damaging effects, changes its mechanical behaviour and varies both the internal stress redistribution and the kinematics through which it reaches its ultimate state. To identify such a behaviour, the evolution of both the damaging process and its mechanical consequences have to be taken into account. This paper presents a computational approach for the analysis of reinforced and prestressed concrete elements under sustained loading conditions and subjected to given damaging scenarios. The effects of the diffusion of aggressive agents, of the onset and development of the corrosion state in the reinforcement and the corresponding mechanical response are studied. As known, the corrosion on the reinforcing bars influences the damaging rate in the cracking pattern evolution; hence, the damage development and the mechanical behaviours are considered as coupled phenomena. The reliability of such an approach is validated in modelling the diffusion of the aggressive agents and the changes in the mechanical response of simple structural elements whose experimental behaviour is reported in Literature. A second set of analyses studies the effects of the corrosion of the tendons of a P.C. beam and explores potentially unexpected structural responses caused by corrosion under different aggressive exposition. The role of the different types and of the different positions of the damaging agents is discussed. In particular, it is shown how the collapse mode of the beam may switch from flexural to shear type, in case corrosion is caused by a localized chloride attack in the shear span.

• Resources Recycling
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• v.25 no.5
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• pp.75-83
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• 2016

AlN powder was prepared by carbon reduction and subsequent nitridation method through the scale-up experiments of 0.7 ~ 1.5 kg per batch. AlN powder was synthesized using the mixture of $Al_2O_3$ powder and carbon black at $1,550{\sim}1,750^{\circ}C$ for 0.5 ~ 4 hours under nitrogen atmosphere (flow rate of nitrogen gas: $10{\sim}40{\ell}/min$) at $2.0{\times}10^{-1}Torr$. Experimental results showed that $1,700{\sim}1,750^{\circ}C$ for the reaction temperature, 3 hr for reaction time, and $40{\ell}/min$ for the flow rate of nitrogen gas were the optimal conditions. Also, in order to remove carbon in the synthesized AlN, the remained carbon was removed at $650{\sim}750^{\circ}C$ for 1 ~ 2 hr using horizontal tube furnace. The results showed that 1 : 3.2 mol ratio of $Al_2O_3$ to carbon black, reaction temperature of $750^{\circ}C$, reaction time of 2 hours, rotating speed of 1.5 rpm under atmosphere condition were the optimal conditions. Under these conditions, high-purity AlN powder over 99% could be prepared: carbon and oxygen contents of the AlN powder were 835 ppm and 0.77%, respectively.