Durability study of new types of low-carbon concrete planned for long-term monitoring station

Abstract

Civil engineering is a fast-evolving discipline, and nowadays trend toward sustainability is bringing new challenges that have to be addressed. The evolution is mainly visible in structural and architectural design. An indispensable part of civil engineering is a material technology that is facing much pressure regarding carbon footprint reduction. Concrete, the most common building material, is often labeled as high carbon-footprint material, and therefore, a lot of effort is invested in concrete alternative input materials, design, and its reuse at the end of life. Low carbon concrete (LCC) is a term used for concrete mixes with supplementary cementitious materials (SCM) or the use of recycled aggregates as a replacement for cement or natural aggregates. Among the established SCM, such as fly ash, slag or micro-silica, new SCM types are approaching the market soon. One of these is volcanic puzzolan Iceland (VPI) introduced by Heidelberg Materials sement Norge or limestone powder, and its durability performance will be the main subject of this thesis. The theoretical part of the thesis will focus on the applicability of freeze-thaw test methods used for laboratory accelerated testing on large-scale samples placed in long-term monitoring stations. The performance of LCC with VPI or Sibelco filter fines will be tested on a series of mixes with various cement replacement ratios and compared with the reference mix purely with CEM I. Fresh and hardened concrete properties will be complemented by water tightness test and freeze-thaw durability tests with various curing conditions, including CO2 treatment and a prolonged curing period. The Target of the thesis is to verify the durability performance of LCC with VPI and limestone powder.