Profile

Rijkswaterstaat (the executing organ of the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management), wants to gain more insight in the ageing and self-healing behaviour of concrete to be able to better predict the service life of civil concrete structures.

The optimization of material use (which is driven by CO₂ reduction) might negatively influence the robustness of concrete structures. The effect for the long term can be that infrastructural concrete structures require major repair or replacement a lot earlier than expected because they can no longer fulfil their structural task due to durability issues. Regarding sustainability, this is not a desirable situation to get into.
As an extra, the developed knowledge about ageing and self-healing of concrete can be used to assess existing concrete structures.

Research

• PFM analysis on concrete from new samples as well as from existing structures.
• Core sampling without disturbance; in situ moisture determination; permeability testing (in situ and in laboratory).
• Self-healing testing on cracks with non-stationary crack width (cyclic loading).

All testing to be carried out on three commonly used concrete types: CEM I concrete, CEM III/b concrete (blended w/ BFS) and CEM II/a (blended w/ FA).