Author:

Abstract:

The production of ordinary Portland cement (OPC) has a significant impact on the global CO2 emissions. From a sustainability point-of-view, the use of supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs) such as granulated blast-furnace slag (GBFS) or fly ash (FA) as a partial replacement of OPC is desirable. Despite the growing gain of the production and consumption of cement with SCMs over pure OPC, more research is needed to completely understand the evolution of the microstructure of young cement pastes exposed to environmental attack. This will lead to a more accurate estimation of the impact of the early removal of formwork or short curing periods on the durability of concrete structures. Moreover, the reciprocal effect of combined degradation mechanisms on concrete is not well understood and investigated. For this, combined durability tests will be performed on concrete specimens with the intent to optimize the existing service life design models. The research primary focuses on carbonation of cement pastes and concrete. In a next phase, the impact of carbonation on chloride ingress and frost salt scaling will be investigated.