Autogenous Self-healing Assessment of 1-Year-Old Cementitious Composites

Abstract

Traditional concrete materials are prone to cracking and as cracks form, durability issues arise which reduce the expected service life of the materials followed by structures incorporating them. This, in many occasions, may lead to repetitive repair and maintenance or even re-construction of certain structural/non-structural sections and structures. Thus, it is highly desirable to reduce the chance and/or further development of cracking. Engineered Cementitious Composites (ECC) are feasible materials to suppress cracking formation and progression through their strain-hardening response under uniaxial tensile loading conditions. Even at the stage of failure, these materials exhibit micron-size cracks which significantly improve the capability to resist against detrimental durability issues. Moreover, these microcracks are constantly reported to be closed through autogenous healing mechanisms with no external interference from outside which significantly improve the mechanical and durability performance and service life of these materials and structures incorporating them. However, the performance of autogenous self-healing in ECC is called into question, especially for late-age specimens since reactions which produce products to plug the micro-size cracks stabilize as the specimens get more and more mature. To clarify this subject, in this study, 1-year-old specimens produced from ECC mixtures incorporated with different mineral admixtures (i.e. Class-F fly ash and ground granulated blast furnace slag) were tested for their self-healing performance. For self-healing evaluation, specimens which were severely preloaded for creating microcracks, were subjected to four different curing conditions which included “Water”, “Air”, “CO2-water” and “CO2-air” for 90 additional days beyond initial 1 year. Tests used for self-healing assessments were electrical impedance (EI) and rapid chloride permeability (RCP). Results indicate that water is a must-have component for enhanced autogenous self-healing efficiency. “CO2-Water” curing results in the most effective self-healing performance regardless of the composition of ECC mixtures. By properly adjusting mixture proportions and curing conditions, microcracks as large as nearly half a millimeter (458 µm) can be healed in only 30 days of further curing. Overall, results clearly suggest that late-age autogenous self-healing capability of ECC can be made as effective as the early-age with proper further environmental conditioning and mixture design. © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.