Sažetak
One of the main sources of degradation of concrete structures placed in the cold climatic regions is freezing. There are two types of freezing mechanisms, scalling caused with usage of deicing salts and internal concrete degradation caused with cyclic freezing of water in the pores of concrete. It can be experimentally proven that exists certain degree of concrete saturation with water for which damages appears. If saturation of concrete is lower than critical saturation there is no damages, even for construction exposed to high number of freezing-thawing cycles. This is basic assumptions for concrete structures degradation modelling. The critical water content is individual for each type of concrete. It depends on the actual value of the critical flow distance and on the size distribution of the pore system. It follows that critical water content can be determined experimettally by freezing of specimens with different water content, or theoreticially from data about pore distribution and critical flow distance. Concrete construction can be divided into representative unit cells. Each cell have own damage risk and own service life. Service life of whole construction is sum of risks for all unit cells, so that some cells placed on the most sensitive points have bigger risk than other cells. Fundamentally for service life pediction is knowledge of the future degree of concrete saturation, which can be obtained from the theoretical calculations which have high level of uncertainity, or much easier from capillary absorption experiments.
Ključne riječi
Durability; Concrete structures; Frost degradation; Critical degree of saturation; Capillary absorption