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Monitoring of dielectric permittivity in accelerated alkali-silica reaction concrete with microwave backscattering

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Abstract

Deterioration of concrete due to the alkali–silica reaction (ASR) involves a reaction between alkaline ions in the cement pore solution and non-crystalline silica found in many aggregates. The product of reaction is a porous hydrophilic ASR gel, which causes expansion and cracking of concrete structure. Currently, there is no reliable method for non-destructive evaluation of ASR. We have investigated the feasibility of using relative dielectric permittivity obtained from X-band microwave backscattering of concrete. Advantages of this method of concrete evaluation are that measurements are non-contact and one-sided, and the approach is scalable to arbitrary-size concrete structures. The exploratory study was performed using an unrestrained set of accelerated ASR concrete prism specimens developed according to the ASTM1293 standard. One set of specimens contained no entrained air, while another set was contained entrained air. The specimens were removed from the environmental chamber at different times during a year-long study to create a set of different ASR maturity specimens. Strain measurements were performed on all specimens. Strain data both air entrained and non-air entrained sets were shown to be in close agreement with Larive model of isothermal unrestrained ASR expansion with similar fitting parameters. Relative dielectric permittivity of concrete specimens was correlated with strain data. Both sets show correlation between dielectric permittivity and strain, with stronger linear correlation observed for the air-entrained specimens. Development of such correlation would enable estimating expansion of actual concrete structures from microwave backscattering measurements, which could be used for risk stratification to guide and minimize coring.

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Acknowledgements

Argonne National Laboratory’s work was supported by the Nuclear Energy Science and Technology Laboratory-Directed Research and Development (LDRD) program under contract DE-AC02-06CH11357.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Nuclear Science and Engineering Division, Argonne National Laboratory, Lemont, IL, USA

    Alexander Heifetz, Meredith Strow, Yangqing Liu, Peter Bevington & Sasan Bakhtiari

  2. Department of Civil and Materials Engineering, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

    Meredith Strow

  3. DRP, A Twinning Company, Boulder, CO, USA

    Meredith Strow

  4. Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

    Yangqing Liu

  5. Department of Physics, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

    Peter Bevington

  6. Material Science and Engineering Division, Argonne National Laboratory, Lemont, IL, USA

    Peter Zapol

  7. Jensen Hughes, Chicago, IL, USA

    Anthony Bentivegna

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  1. Alexander Heifetz
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  2. Meredith Strow
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  6. Sasan Bakhtiari
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  7. Anthony Bentivegna
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Correspondence to Alexander Heifetz.

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Heifetz, A., Strow, M., Liu, Y. et al. Monitoring of dielectric permittivity in accelerated alkali-silica reaction concrete with microwave backscattering. Mater Struct 53, 130 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1617/s11527-020-01559-9

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