Microstructural analysis of the adhesion mechanism between old concrete substrate and UHPFC

Abstract

The performance of any repaired concrete structure, and thus its service life, depends on the quality of the interfacial transition zone of the composite system formed by the repair material and the existing concrete substrate. In this work, the properties of the interfacial transition zone between normal concrete (NC) substrate as an old concrete and ultra-high performance fiber-reinforced concrete (UHPFC) as a repair material was investigated. Pull-off and splitting cylinder tensile tests were performed to quantify the bond strength in direct and indirect tensions, respectively. The microstructure of the interfacial transition zone was also studied using scanning electron microscopy and energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (SEM/EDS). Different types of NC substrate surface preparation methods were used. An optical three-dimensional surface metrology device was used to estimate the substrate roughness parameters …