Introduction

The procedure for the determination of chloride penetration is described in EN 12390‑11:2015, “Testing hardened concrete — Determination of the chloride resistance of concrete — Unidirectional diffusion” and it has been published by CEN. The method is based on natural diffusion; a concentration profile after 90 days of contact with the chloride solution is used to fit Fick’s law in order to calculate the chloride surface concentration, C_s and the non-steady-state chloride diffusion coefficient, D_nss. The method specifies three different modes of contact of the salt solution with one face of the specimen, immersion (DCL1), ponding (DCL2) and inversion (DCL3).

CEN/TC 51/WG 12 has also produced two methods addressed to the determination of the carbonation resistance of the concrete, the first one refers to natural condition and has been published as CEN/TS 12390‑10, “Testing hardened concrete — Part 10: Determination of the relative carbonation resistance of the concrete“, the second one, referring to accelerated condition, has been prepared by CEN/TC 51/WG 12/TG 5, but it has been disapproved by National Members at Formal Vote CEN TCA1).

The upgrading to EN standard of the aforesaid documents should require as first step the evaluation of robustness and precision data.

Having in mind these needs, CEN/TC 51/WG 12 organized a “Validation Testing Program (VTP) on chloride penetration and carbonation” for the preliminary evaluation of the robustness and the precision data of the test methods.

For the scope of the present work as robustness is intended the sensitivity of the test method to a composition change of concrete that are expected to produce an appreciable change in related performance.

PD CEN/TR 17172:2022

Validation testing program on chloride penetration and carbonation standardized test methods

Current

Published:

31 Aug 2022