Smyl, D. orcid.org/0000-0002-6730-5277, Ghasemzadeh, F. and Pour-Ghaz, M. (2016) Modeling water absorption in concrete and mortar with distributed damage. Construction and Building Materials, 125. pp. 438-449. ISSN 0950-0618
Abstract
The deterioration rate of concrete structures is directly influenced by the rate of moisture ingress. Modeling moisture ingress in concrete is therefore essential for quantitative estimation of the service life of concrete structures. While models for saturated moisture transport are commonly used, concrete, during its service life, is rarely saturated and some degree of damage is often present. In this work, we investigate whether classical isothermal unsaturated moisture transport can be used to simulate moisture ingress in damaged mortar and concrete and we compare the results of numerical simulations with experimental measurements of water sorption. The effect of hysteresis of moisture retention is also considered in the numerical simulations. The results indicate that the unsaturated moisture transport models well simulate early stages of moisture ingress at all damage levels, where capillary suction is the prominent mechanism. At later stages of moisture transport, where air diffusion and dissolution have a more significant contribution, simulations that consider moisture hysteresis compare most favorably with experimental results.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2016 Elsevier. This is an author produced version of a paper subsequently published in Construction and Building Materials. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. Article available under the terms of the CC-BY-NC-ND licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). |
Keywords: | Cracking; Distributed damage; Durability; Finite element method; Mass transport; Numerical modeling; Unsaturated mass transport |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Engineering (Sheffield) > Department of Civil and Structural Engineering (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 22 May 2019 11:09 |
Last Modified: | 22 May 2019 11:13 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Elsevier |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1016/j.conbuildmat.2016.08.044 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:146268 |