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Deterioration mechanism of sulphur dioxide attack on concrete in a humid environment

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Abstract

With the rapid development of industrialization, a large amount of SO2 is emitted, and the attack of concrete by SO2 is severe in humid environments. In this study, a test method for SO2 attack of concrete in an environment with saturated humidity was proposed, and the variations in the neutralization depth, physical and mechanical properties of concrete during an experimental period of 20 d were analysed. The mechanism of SO2 attack of concrete was also examined by XRD, TG, and SEM. The results showed that increasing the age and water–cement ratio could increase the neutralization depth, which was the largest at 20 d for the water–cement ratio of 0.57. The mass increased with increasing age, and the rate of mass change increased as the water–cement ratio decreased. The compressive strength first increased and then decreased with increasing age. The rate of strength loss increased as the water–cement ratio decreased, and the maximum value was 21.05% at 20 d. The main sulfated products of concrete were gypsum and ettringite. Needle-like crystal ettringite formed near the hydration products at 2 d, and there was a substantial amount of plate-like crystal gypsum at 20 d. The increase in the attack age and decrease in the water–cement ratio could result in an increase in the gypsum content in the surface layer of concrete, which was much larger than that of ettringite. However, the gypsum content of concrete at 4 mm was relatively small, which was slightly different from the ettringite content.

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Acknowledgements

This research was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 52078413), the Program for Innovative Research Team in University of Ministry of Education of China (Grant No. IRT17R84), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 52178163).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Civil Engineering, Xi’an University of Architecture and Technology, No.13 Yanta Rd., Xi’an, 710055, Shaanxi Province, China

    Yao Lv, Ditao Niu, Xiguang Liu & Zhiyuan Cao

  2. State Key Laboratory of Green Building in Western China, University of Architecture and Technology, No.13 Yanta Rd., Xi’anXi’an, 710055, Shaanxi Province, China

    Ditao Niu & Xiguang Liu

  3. School of Materials Science and Engineering, Xi’an University of Architecture and Technology, No.13 Yanta Rd., Xi’an, 710055, Shaanxi Province, China

    Yan Wang

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  1. Yao Lv
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Contributions

Y.L.—Literature search, study design, experiment operation, figures, data curation, data analysis, writing—review & editing. D.N.—Study design, funding acquisition and writing. X.L.—Data analysis and funding acquisition. Z.C.—Experiment operation. W.Y.—Experiment operation, review & editing. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

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Lv, Y., Niu, D., Liu, X. et al. Deterioration mechanism of sulphur dioxide attack on concrete in a humid environment. Mater Struct 57, 7 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1617/s11527-023-02279-6

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