DAMAGE EVOLUTION OF CONCRETE BY ELECTRICAL RESISTIVITY MONITORING METHOD AFTER A LEACHING PERIOD COUPLED WITH FREEZE-THAW CYCLES

The leaching behaviour of hydraulic concrete can't be ignored for its long-term exposure to surrounding water resulting in irreversible damage of durability, such as strength loss and porosity increase. The coupled effect of leaching and freeze-thaw cycles on the durability of hydraulic concrete in severe cold regions is a bigger challenge. For the quite slow process of natural leaching, electrochemical accelerated leaching method (EALM) was proposed to investigate the damage evolution under two test schemes (scheme one is only leaching for 50 days and scheme two is first 100 rapid freeze-thaw cycles and then leaching for 50 days) designed in this work. The electrical resistivity and calcium oxide dissolved mass were measured through electrode impedance spectroscopy (EIS) and EDTA titration method, respectively. Based on electrical resistivity measurement, the measurable damage can be discussed during above-mentioned single and coupled tests. The results indicate that compared with single leaching the coupled leaching with the freeze-thaw cycling leads to over 50% electrical resistance loss, the largest difference of both calcium oxide dissolved mass and pH in cathode room on the 21st day.