Numerical and Experimental Study of Chloride Ion Transport in Recycled Aggregates Concrete

Abstract

This paper analyses, both experimentally and numerically, the transport of chloride ions inside concrete. The samples are made from either 100% Natural Aggregates (NA) or 100% Recycled Concrete Aggregates (RCA). The goal of this research is to quantify the loss of durability of Recycled Aggregates Concrete (RAC) with respect to Natural Aggregates Concrete (NAC), possibly promoting their use in long-term building.

The experimental campaign focused on evaluation of transfer properties of concrete: water absorption, retention curves, intrinsic permeability, chloride diffusion under steady and unsteady state and conduction experiments were performed. The results depict that RAC tends to have higher exchange rates with the environment than NAC, mainly due to the increased paste content from the recycled aggregates.