Design Service Life of RC Structures with Self-Healing Behaviour to Increase Infrastructure Carbon Savings

Abstract

Corrosion of reinforced concrete (RC) structures costs the UK GBP 23b annually and is one of the main durability problems contributing to the development of rust, spalling, cracking, delamination, and structural deterioration. This paper intends to demonstrate the benefit of using tailored self-healing bacteria-based concrete for RC corrosion minimisation and service life increase. The purpose was to evaluate the enhancement in the lifespan of the structure exposed to a harsh marine microenvironment by utilising a probabilistic performance-based method. Comparison is made with the performance of a commercially available solution and in terms of embodied carbon impact. Three different concretes, using CEM I 52.5N, CEM II/A-D, and CEM III/A, were tested with and without an iron-respiring bioproduct (BIO) and an added admixture corrosion inhibitor (AACI). Results show that bioproduct significantly contributes to service life increase of RC structures with CEMIII/A. The repair solution with self-healing behaviour not only increases RC service life, but also enables us to decrease the required cover thickness from 60 mm to 50 mm in an XS2 chloride environment. In both XS2 and XS3 environments, a comparison of CEMIII/A+BIO and CEMII/A-D+AACI concrete shows the benefit of using bioproduct in corrosion inhibition context, besides contributing to an embodied carbon reduction of more than 20%.

Taguchi-integrated grey relational analysis for multi-response optimization of mix design for alkali-activated concrete

“…In addition to durability, it also affects the economy since it is associated with huge repair and maintenance costs of important buildings. RC corrosion contributes to about 3%-4% of India's annual National GDP [11].…”

Self-Healing Mechanical Properties of Selected Roofing Felts

“…The first group could be represented by [ 53 , 54 ], in which the authors present the self-healing behavior in cement-based and concrete material. In the former context, interesting research is presented in [ 55 , 56 ], in which the authors try to predict the life-cycle of self-healed products. In [ 57 ], a numerical simulation of the response of concrete structural elements containing an SH agent is presented.…”