Freezing and de-icing salt resistance of blast furnace slag concretes

This paper presents the results on investigations made into a concrete containing cement rich in granulated blast furnace slag (57%). Whereas slag cement concretes have proved successful in structures subjected to chemical attack, their use in structures subjected to freezing and de-icing salt attack is a problem of numerous investigations. The results concerning water/cement ratio and air content in concrete mixtures are presented in this paper. The effect of polypropylene microfibre addition to the concrete was also analysed. The research shows that air entraining the concrete mix up to the level of 5-6% guarantees obtaining high resistance to the action of de-icing agents, even at relatively high values of water/cement ratio. Apart the air content, the addition of microfibre to the concrete mixture was highly effective. For these samples scaling was the lowest. Phase composition investigations confirm that calcite and aragonite (as the carbonation products) were present on the surface of concrete. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.