Water-impact abrasion of self-compacting concrete

Abrasion erosion is one of the serious problems that encounters the concrete surfaces exposed to speedy water flow in hydraulic structures, affects their service life and poses the need to expensive maintenance works. Some parts of the hydraulic structure like chute blocks and baffle piers in spillways are designed to face direct impact of water and waterborne materials. For such type of loading, the water-jet test method can be used to simulate the abrasion erosion of concrete surfaces. In this study, an experimental work was conducted to evaluate the abrasion erosion of self-compacting concrete under the effect of water impact. Plate specimens from six mixtures with 30, 40 and 50 MPa design stengths and with 0, 0.5, 0.75 and 1.0 % steel fiber contents were tested using the water-jet method. The results showed that increasing the strength from 30 to 40 MPa can reduce the abrasion losses by approximately 17 %, while using steel fibers with volumetric contents of 0.75 and 1.0 % can improve the abrasion resistance by more than 23 %. It was also concluded that the best percentage abrasion resistance improvement was gained when the strength of the plain specimens was increased to 50 MPa, which was 30 % compared to the plain 30 MPa sample.