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ASR Potential of Volcanic Aggregates Using the Gel-Pat Test and the Phosphoric Acid Method

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Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Alkali-Aggregate Reaction in Concrete (ICAAR 2024)

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Abstract

In previous research, volcanic rocks from the Azores Islands (Portugal), Brazil, Canada, Canary Islands (Spain), Hawaiian Islands (USA), Iceland, Japan, Mozambique, New Zealand, Norway, and Turkey were studied to assess their potential reactivity to alkalis. The analyzed samples correspond to basalt, andesite and rhyolite. Several tests were performed, namely, petrographic characterization by optical microscopy and scanning electron microscopy, bulk rock chemical analysis, accelerated mortar-bar test and concrete prism test.

In volcanic rocks, the possible reactive forms of silica are not only of minute size, and hard to identify, but are also usually present in very low content, and often below the detection limits used in chemical bulk rock analysis.

This study reports the results obtained in additional tests to characterize the aforementioned aggregates: 1) the phosphoric acid method, by dissolution of silicates of the rock reduced to powder, preserving the free silica forms of the sample; and 2) the gel-pat test, applied on lengthwise slabs of concrete prisms prepared with the selected aggregates, to obtain the possible presence of reactive components, in particular volcanic glass and free silica polymorphs.

The results from the two tests are presented and the possible correlations with the results from the petrographic characterization and from the expansion tests are discussed.

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Acknowledgements

This work was funded by the Portuguese Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) I.P./MCTES through national funds (PIDDAC) – UIDB/50019/2020 (https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.54499/UIDB/50019/2020), UIDP/50019/2020 (https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.54499/UIDP/50019/2020) and LA/P/0068/2020 (https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.54499/LA/P/0068/2020).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Instituto Dom Luiz, Lisbon, Portugal

    Sara Medeiros & Isabel Fernandes

  2. Faculty of Sciences, University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal

    Isabel Fernandes

  3. National Laboratory for Civil Engineering (LNEC), Lisbon, Portugal

    António Santos Silva

  4. Université Laval, Quebec, QC, Canada

    Benoit Fournier

  5. Camborne School of Mines, University of Exeter, Penryn, UK

    Violeta Ramos

  6. Faculty of Sciences and Technology, University of the Azores, Ponta Delgada, Portugal

    João Carlos Nunes

Authors
  1. Sara Medeiros
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  2. Isabel Fernandes
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  3. António Santos Silva
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  4. Benoit Fournier
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  5. Violeta Ramos
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  6. João Carlos Nunes
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Correspondence to Sara Medeiros .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Civil Engineering, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON, Canada

    Leandro F.M. Sanchez

  2. Department of Civil Engineering, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON, Canada

    Cassandra Trottier

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Medeiros, S., Fernandes, I., Silva, A.S., Fournier, B., Ramos, V., Nunes, J.C. (2024). ASR Potential of Volcanic Aggregates Using the Gel-Pat Test and the Phosphoric Acid Method. In: Sanchez, L.F., Trottier, C. (eds) Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Alkali-Aggregate Reaction in Concrete. ICAAR 2024. RILEM Bookseries, vol 49. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-59419-9_28

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-59419-9_28

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