Ageing factor for fly ash cement concrete (FACC)

Durability performance of concrete is enhanced by adding supplementary cementitious materials such as fly ash. The concrete made with addition of fly ash with Portland cement is called fly ash cement concrete (FACC). Generally, modelling approach is applied to predict the service time of concrete in aggressive environment. Most degradation of concrete is found in marine environment, due to the exposure of concrete to chlorides. Service life modelling is performed using diffusion equation (Eq. 1) with diffusion coefficient (D) equation (Eq. 2), and to get the diffusion coefficient (D) over time, ageing factor is used for analysis. During modelling stage, as this phase of study is started well before construction, concrete for its durability performance is checked. As well, service life modelling is performed for the existing structures, so that the time to failure may be obtained. In recent times, failure of Miami Building, USA, June 2021, has raised the importance of service life modelling (SLM) of reinforced concrete structures (RCC) in chloride environment. So, in such environments, a more need of more reliable results is raised. Presence of a number of ageing factors in literature raises a question which ageing factor is more approximate. Dependency of performance of modelling approach is on the selection of more approximate values. So, in present study, performance of ageing factors for fly ash cement concrete (FACC) is checked. So, literature was surveyed and the long-term chloride diffusion coefficient (D) values were obtained for fly ash cement concrete (FACC). It was found that a significant difference is present in the predicted values with different available ageing factors. Since results obtained from modelling depend on the parameters, so it can be assumed that the variation of chloride diffusion coefficient (D) will vary the results. So, in present study, a new ageing factor was developed. Service life modelling for durability with fly ash cement concrete (FCC) may be relied on the newly developed ageing factors, as this will give better results, which will be more reliable.