Frost-Related Damage of Portland Cement Pastes at Early Age

In cold climates, early-age cementitious material is easily threatened by frost damage, causing deterioration of material properties. To investigate the hazard and failure mechanism of cement paste due to early frost damage, the cement hydration process was divided into five stages via the electrical resistivity method, and then fresh cement pastes were frozen in five stages and two different temperatures, respectively. Furthermore, mechanical tests and X-ray computed tomography scanning were carried out to characterize the development of frost-related damage. The results indicated that the effect of initial frost time on strength growth is greater than that of freezing temperature, and the cement matrix can be considered completely damaged when frost-related damage occurs before the initial setting. The frost-related texture develops from outside to inside and the porosity of the sample frozen at the first three stages was higher than that of samples frozen at the last two stages. Finally, the frost-related damage could be divided into three types: flow extrusion damage, freezing expansion cracking damage, and flow extrusion-freezing expansion cracking combined damage.