Short and long-term behaviors of concrete structures are of importance when dealing with du- rability aspects. One particular interesting aspect is the change in microstructure of concrete submitted to dry- ing or leaching processes, and a potentially induced cracking pattern.…
Short and long-term behaviors of concrete structures are of importance when dealing with du- rability aspects. One particular interesting aspect is the change in microstructure of concrete submitted to dry- ing or leaching processes, and a potentially induced cracking pattern. Experimental investigations which fo- cus on the effect of the dimensions of aggregates over cracks are proposed in this paper. The study is conducted on geometrically simplified cementitious materials (composites cementitious matrix-spherical rigid glass inclusions). The samples are submitted to accelerated leaching or to drying, and the evolution of their microstructure is regularly recorded by means of X-ray microtomography, at a resolution of 5.3 µm. Two me- thods are proposed to study the cracking pattern, which appears to be greatly dependant of the size of inclu- sions. In particular, it appears that a larger diameter of inclusions tends to increase the crack opening but to decrease the number of distinct cracks.