Engineering expression of the ClinConc model for prediction of free and total chloride

Journal article, 2008

This paper intends to express the physical model ClinConc in a more engineer-friendly way. Through the numerical evaluation it has been found that there exist good correlations between the time-dependent factors for chloride binding and for diffusion coefficient, and between the laboratory measured diffusion coefficient and the apparent one, the latter is a result of the combined effects of material properties and environmental actions. Therefore, the ClinConc model can be expressed by the similar error function as used in many empiric models, but with the proper physical procedures, that is, modeling free chloride transport taking free chloride as diffusion potential and then calculating the total chloride content taking into account the non-linear chloride binding. The modeled chloride profiles are in good agreement with the measured ones, even though further study is needed to clarify the expansion coefficient for the concrete containing silica fume and other pozzolanic additions.