Vulnerability of Structural Concrete to Extreme Climate Variances

Abstract

For modern infrastructures, structural concrete has been widely adopted for various components and structures such as railway stations, platforms, walkways, railway bridges, tunnelling, concrete sleepers, concrete foundation of overhead wiring structures, etc. These infrastructures are subject to various changes of time, operation, and environment. Environmental conditions are a considerably influential factor to life cycle and durability of concrete structures. This study aims at identifying the influence of climate change on the performance and durability of concrete structures using statistical regression analysis of a number of pertinent experimental and field data. The study into the influence of elevated temperature on compressive strength and splitting tensile strength also has been carried out using experimental data on the basis of environmental temperature and relative humidity, as well as CO 2 concentration to the concrete carbonation and steel corrosion rates. The results indicate that environmental temperature, CO 2 concentration, and a certain range of relative humidity play an important role in the concrete carbonation rates. Temperature and relative humidity affect the rate of steel corrosion as well. In addition, it is found that there exists a nearly direct correlation between the environmental temperature and the concrete carbonation rates, as well as the corrosion rate of steel embedded in concrete from 25 • C to 60 • C, and a nearly inverse proportion between the environmental relative humidity and the concrete carbonization from 48.75% to 105%. Indeed, the results exhibit that even in extreme natural high temperature, the capacity of compressive strength and splitting tensile strength is not affected significantly.

The Self-Sealing Capacity of Environmentally Friendly, Highly Damped, Fibre-Reinforced Concrete

“…With regard to previous papers on the regained compressive strength evaluation, 26.8% and 42.8% were found in the compressive strength recovery [5,26,[44][45][46][47]. It is obvious that the regained compressive strengths in this article were significantly smaller than those in previous papers [48,49]. Thus, the regained compressive strength, ranging from 2.284% to 3.269% in this study, cannot be interpreted as a clear difference to be used in the assessment of the self-sealing capacity.…”

Effect of Extreme Climate on Topology of Railway Prestressed Concrete Sleepers

“…Therefore, extreme events are likely to happen more frequently due to atmosphere and ocean warming, polar iceberg melting, and greenhouse gas emissions. A variety of reports by the Rail Safety and Standard Board (RSSB) have revealed similar trends to the IPCC (shown in Figure 3) [23][24][25]. The ongoing increase of hot weather spells is confirmed by the tail of the statistical distribution, which indicates that extremely hot events are going to take place more frequently in the future.…”

Life Cycle Assessment of Railway Ground-Borne Noise and Vibration Mitigation Methods Using Geosynthetics, Metamaterials and Ground Improvement

“…The mechanism that concrete trenches reduce vibration is similar to the other type of trench. However, some studies showed than concrete-filled trenches are less efficient than Geofoam trenches due to concretes' mechanical and dynamic properties [8,27,28]. Considering the potential adoption of concrete-filled trenches, there is a need to assess the life-cycle performance and compare these two types of infilled trenches.…”