ASR Affected structures in Netherlands - 3

Nordwijkhout, Herenweg Viaduct: 

Built in 1964, over highway N206. Recently diagnosed with severe map cracking and coloration under the deck and abutments. In 1999, several cores have been extracted from the structure and ASR formations were observed. Couple of months ago, administrative units concluded on demolition of this structure. PAT-ASR team will be involved in further studies on concrete cores from this structure. You can find images of our recent site visit to this structure.

ASR Affected structures in Netherlands - 2

Schoonhoven, Montigny Viaduct:

Built in 1959, on road N216 is the first confirmed concrete structure in the Netherlands which was severely damaged by alkali silica reaction. Bridge demolished end of 2010.

Dr Oguzhan Copuroglu studied several cores from this structure for the investigation of microstructural features of the concrete and amorphous and crystalline ASR product compositions.

This study concluded that ASR and related damage were exclusively created by the reactive coarse aggregate although the fine aggregates exhibit reactive components in the Montigny viaduct concrete. You can find the details on this study* in Proceedings of the 33th Int. conference on cement microscopy.

* O. Copuroglu, G. Einarsson, "Montigny viaduct revisited: Microstructure of an ASR damaged concrete from 1959", Proceedings of the 33th Int. conference on cement microscopy, San Francisco, California, U.S.A, April 17-20, 2011

ASR Affected structures in Netherlands

In Netherlands, most highway structures are concrete structures. However alkali silica reaction is mostly overlooked until 1995. Mostly, due to wide usage of high slag content concrete. Netherlands was confronted with the first large scale ASR-damage in A59 highway where 20 bridges were identified to be affected. Today there ongoing studies on these bridges and several other structures. Lately, (unofficially) the first structure was demolished due to ASR. PAT-ASR team got involved with this structure and did some petrographic analysis on the cores extracted from A bridge in Schoonhoven (Zuid-Holland Province).

Recently, we got in touch with Zuid Holland Province administration, who are eager to carry out studies on several structures which are supposed to be ASR affected. You can find more info about this possibly affected/suspected structures under investigation (and also find a map for the locations of these structures).

View ASR in NL in a larger map

Ongoing studies on some of there structures will follow:  

Very Preliminary test results

In TUD laboratories, we are executing accelerated performance tests –which are defined by AAR study groups of RILEM committee-. Results from these tests and analyses on the samples will be used for backward compatibility checks with cores/information from existing affected structures and ongoing studies on parameter characterisation in literature. 

Later batch of mixes will be aiming to  get the same mix as Nautesund Birdge in Oslo, Norway. This bridge was built in 1958 and demolished in 2009. ASR has been diagnosed as a part of degradation, and overall assessment of the bridge, thus final demolition decision.

Pictures from the construction of Nautesund Bridge - courtesy of Ingvar Hellestad,  (special thanks to Per Hagelia).

Polished section from 7 original cores are under preparation process. We are hoping to get comparable results early 2012.

 

Currently validations test with 4 mixes, based on Norwegian Reference concrete are running for RILEM AAR-3 @ 38° C and AAR-4 @ 60° C tests. Current mixes involve Aggregates : Ardal, Spratt and Ottersbo and cements from NORCEM Cement CEMI : Industri and Anlegg. These results will be used for the confirmation of TUD Labs testing performance. Very preliminary expansion results to follow (as of 21st Oct, 2011):

 

Life of a PhD

Not exactly applies to our working environment and our team, yet a funny interpretation of stereotyped PhD researcher life.

New Member in PAT-ASR Team

Recently a new researcher joined PAT-ASR team. Dr Marc Ottelé started in September 2011 as a post-doc. He will be working on the experimental part of our project. You can find more information about him here (only in Dutch). A warm Welcome to Marc.

PAT-ASR Team