The Investigation of Crack widths for the Effect of Cracks on Chloride Penetration of Concrete

콘코리트 중의 염화물 침투에 영향을 미치는 균열폭에 대한 고찰

Chloride penetration into concrete is a hot issue of concern all over the world, notwithstanding, very few attempts have been conducted to explore the effect of cracks on choride penetration. Cracks provoke to lose a main function of watertightness of concrete and lead to reduce the service life of concrete. For this reason, it is necessary to define a critical crack width to prevent a quick chloride penetration through crack. In this study, experiment is focused on establishing a critical crack width in terms of chloride penetration. Concrete specimens with different crack widths I crack lengths have been subjected to rapid chloride migration testing. In a side of analytical solution, a simple approach to quantify the chloride diffusion coefficient of only crack zone excluding sound concrete was proposed. The result clearly showed a critical crack width of 0.03 mm. Based on the experimental results, a phenomenological model was proposed to explain the meaning of critical crack width in practical engineering. In this model, cracked concrete zone was divided into three zones. These zones corresponded to a wide crack, a zone with micro-cracks and an uncracked zone.