Study of effect of freezing and thawing cycles on bonding between fiber-reinforced self-compacting concrete with different water to cementitious ratios and paste volume as a repair layer and concrete substrate

Self-compacting concrete as a type of concrete that has no need to vibration can use for complicated frameworks and in conditions that compaction is hard. So this concrete is an excellent choice for repair and retrofitting of many kinds of concrete structures such as marine structures, bridges and so on. These concrete structures may be under aggressive environmental conditions and harmful agents. One of the most important damages of concrete structures is because of freezing and thawing cycles especially in exposed ones, like bridge’s decks. So, study of effect of different parameters on quality of self-compacting repair layer, its bonding to substrate and its durability under chemical and physical attacks is very important. In this study, effect of paste volume, water to cementitious materials and polypropylene fiber dosages in mix design on rheological, hardened properties and bonding of repair fiber-reinforced self-compacting concrete (FRSCC) to concrete substrate and its durability for freezing and thawing cycles has been assessed. Bonding between FRSCC as a repair layer and concrete substrate had been evaluate using pull-off test. The tests that failed exactly from the bond surface considered as a successful ones, and all tests that failure had been occurred in repair layer or concrete substrate is eliminated from the results. Freezing and thawing test was conducted according to ASTM C666. Both freezing and thawing processes were made in water. To assessment of bonding of FRSCC as a repair layer to concrete substrate, we made 15 cm cubes of substrate layer with compressive strength more than 50 MPa to ensure that the failure doesn’t occur in this layer while pull-off test. After six months (to have concrete substrate without shrinkage),we saw the cubes divided them to 3 pieces. With analyzing of effects of fiber dosages on rheological properties of the mix designs, we found that an increase in fiber percentage that leads to smaller diameter in slump flow test, higher flow time in T50 test, higher time in V-Funnel test, and lower ratio in L-Box test. Also, while compressive strength had no significant changes, tensile strength and modulus of elasticity experienced a big increase through adding polypropylene fibers. Shrinkage of repair layer had a great decrease after adding polypropylene fibers. The optimum dosage of polypropylene fibers for hardened properties of the mix designs was found 0.1% by volume. We can see that because of the positive effect of fibers on decreasing of shrinkage and increasing of tensile strength of repair layers, bonding between the repair layer and concrete substrate increased greatly especially by adding 0.1% polypropylene fibers (by volume). Also, increase of paste volume and water to cementitious materials (summation of cement and micro silica) had negative effect on bonding of repair layer to substrate. That is because of increase of shrinkage of repair layer. Although, adding polypropylene fibers improved bonding of repair layer and substrate in freezing and thawing cycles, we see smaller results for bonding. We defined debonding index (DI) that presents the rate of debonding during freezing and thawing cycles. Higher DI, higher rate of debonding. As we can see, for mixes that containing polypropylene fibers, DI is bigger in comparison with the ones without them.