Qualification Methodology for Concrete Durability  
Author Nadare Matoiri Chaibati

 
Co-Author(s) David Bigaud; Abdessamad Kobi; Horacio Colina

 
Abstract The use of concrete in the field of construction has to respect prescriptive specifications. In Europe, we use EN 206 standard to produce structural concrete. However, innovation with prescriptive specifications, the construction of some structures with high durability and optimized environmental issues are not always possible using prescriptive specifications. To complete prescriptive specifications, an alternative performance-based approach is proposed. This approach focuses on the assessment of durability indicators by means of performance tests. A new concrete is thus qualified if its durability is at least equal to a concrete produced by using prescriptive specifications. The performance tests represent an economic cost for the concrete industry, which seeks a solution to reduce it and at the same time guarantee the qualification process robustness of the new concrete formula durability. One solution is to reduce test durations and to control the sample number for the durability tests. The present work aims to characterize the results of the performance tests with a degradation process in order to determine the minimum number of tests to be performed to qualify the durability of a new concrete with a given confidence level. This involves coupling a statistical approach and a strategy for optimizing an accelerated degradation test plan to qualify the durability of the new concrete.

 
Keywords durability, performance-based approach, accelerated tests, optimization, degradation process
   
    Article #:  24176
 
Proceedings ISSAT International Conference on Reliability and Quality in Design 2018
August 2-4, 2018 - Toronto, Ontario, Canada