Experimental study on effective chloride diffusion coefficient of cement mortar by different electrical accelerated measurements

Abstract

This study investigated the effective chloride diffusion coefficient of cement mortar with different water-to-cement ratio (w/c) under electrical accelerated migration measurement. The cumulative chloride concentration in anode cell solution and the cumulative chloride concentration drop in the cathode cell solution was measured by RCT measurement and the results were further used to calculate the chloride diffusion coefficient by Nordtest Build 355 method and Truc method. The influence of w/c on cement mortar’s chloride coefficient was investigated and the chloride diffusion coefficient under different determination methods were compared with other researchers’ work, a good consistency between this work’s results and literatures’ results was obtained. The results indicated that the increased w/c of cement mortar samples will have a higher chloride diffusion coefficient. The cumulative chloride concentration drop in the cathode cell solution will have deviation in early stage measurement (before 60 h) which will result in overestimation of the effective chloride diffusion coefficient.