Vulnerability of Structural Concrete to Extreme Climate Variances

For modern infrastructures, structural concrete has been widely adopted for various components and structures such as railway stations, platforms, walkways, railway bridges, tunnelling, concrete sleepers, concrete foundation of overhead wiring structures, etc. These infrastructures are subject to various changes of time, operation, and environment. Environmental conditions are a considerably influential factor to life cycle and durability of concrete structures. This study aims at identifying the influence of climate change on the performance and durability of concrete structures using statistical regression analysis of a number of pertinent experimental and field data. The study into the influence of elevated temperature on compressive strength and splitting tensile strength also has been carried out using experimental data on the basis of environmental temperature and relative humidity, as well as CO₂ concentration to the concrete carbonation and steel corrosion rates. The results indicate that environmental temperature, CO₂ concentration, and a certain range of relative humidity play an important role in the concrete carbonation rates. Temperature and relative humidity affect the rate of steel corrosion as well. In addition, it is found that there exists a nearly direct correlation between the environmental temperature and the concrete carbonation rates, as well as the corrosion rate of steel embedded in concrete from 25 °C to 60 °C, and a nearly inverse proportion between the environmental relative humidity and the concrete carbonization from 48.75% to 105%. Indeed, the results exhibit that even in extreme natural high temperature, the capacity of compressive strength and splitting tensile strength is not affected significantly.