Evaluation of Concrete Abrasion Using Traditional and High-Speed Underwater Methods

With the increasing height of new dams, the number of high-water-head and high-flow spillway buildings is gradually increasing, and concretes are required to have better abrasion resistance. Current standards offer a method for evaluating the abrasion resistance of concrete, but when evaluating the abrasion resistance of high-performance concretes, it is necessary to extend the test time to more than 120 h. In this study, an improved way of the current code-specified underwater method was proposed to shorten the testing time, called the high-speed underwater method (HSUM), and the test results of the two methods were evaluated using three-dimensional (3D) laser-scanning technology. It was found that the abrasion efficiency of the HSUM was about twice as much as that of the code-specified method. HSUM resulted in a significant acceleration of the concrete coarse aggregate abrasion process. The average abrasion depth of concrete was between 0 and 6.5 mm (HSUM after 15 h and code method after 30 h), and the abrasion mainly occurred on the surface of slurry, when the abrasion resistance of concrete was obviously affected by the strength and volume of slurry. When the average abrasion depth of concrete exceeded 6.5 mm, it entered the aggregate abrasion stage, and its abrasion resistance was influenced by the aggregate hardness and aggregate content, and the correlation with the slurry strength decreases. The surface roughness parameters Sq and Sa of HSUM concrete increase significantly compared with the code method. HSUM allows for a reduction in experimental time and high performance in evaluating the abrasion resistance of high-performance concretes or concretes with special aggregates (high-strength granite aggregates and cast stone aggregates).