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BCIT Citations Collection
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- How do accelerated carbonation tests affect the natural morphology and transport characteristics of concrete?
- Carbonation in concrete is a natural chemical process by which atmospheric CO2 reacts with calcium oxide in the Ca(OH)2 and CSH phases in hydrated cement paste to form CaCO3. The carbonation rate in the atmosphere is too slow for laboratory testing, and therefore, it is usually accelerated by using relatively higher CO2 concentrations. However, there exists some disagreement as to what CO2 concentration, humidity and temperature should be specified when conducting an accelerated carbonation test. In this study, samples of hydrated cement paste were carbonated at different CO2 concentrations, and analysed using the x-ray diffraction technique. The results show that the morphology of CaCO3 formed at higher CO2 concentrations is different from that of CaCO3 formed at natural concentrations. It should be recognized that the diffusion coefficient measured at higher concentrations will not be exactly the same as that from naturally carbonating concrete due to the formation of these morphologically different products., Article, Published.
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- Hygrothermal modeling of aerated concrete wall and comparison with field experiment
- Proceedings of 3rd International Building Physics Conference: 27 August 2006, Montreal, QC. A two-dimensional heat, air and moisture transport model called hygIRC is adapted to simulate a well-documented field exposure of an aerated concrete wall section. Difficulties are encountered due to a few missing information on boundary conditions of the exposure and hygrothermal properties of aerated con-crete. The paper presents how these inadequacies were overcome to simulate the hygrothermal behavior of the wall section. Appropriate assumptions were made due to justifiable reasons. Then the model provides temporal and spatial distributions of temperature and relative humidity for an extended period that are in ex-cellent agreement with the documented field data. The paper presents the justifications for the assumptions and the comparison of experimental and simulation results., Conference paper, Published. A version of this document is published in: 3rd International Building Physics Conference, Montreal, QC., August 27, 2006, pp. 321-328.