TY - JOUR A1 - Patzelt, Max A1 - Erfurt, Doreen A1 - Ludwig, Horst-Michael T1 - Quantification of cracks in concrete thin sections considering current methods of image analysis JF - Journal of Microscopy N2 - Image analysis is used in this work to quantify cracks in concrete thin sections via modern image processing. Thin sections were impregnated with a yellow epoxy resin, to increase the contrast between voids and other phases of the concrete. By the means of different steps of pre-processing, machine learning and python scripts, cracks can be quantified in an area of up to 40 cm2. As a result, the crack area, lengths and widths were estimated automatically within a single workflow. Crack patterns caused by freeze-thaw damages were investigated. To compare the inner degradation of the investigated thin sections, the crack density was used. Cracks in the thin sections were measured manually in two different ways for validation of the automatic determined results. On the one hand, the presented work shows that the width of cracks can be determined pixelwise, thus providing the plot of a width distribution. On the other hand, the automatically measured crack length differs in comparison to the manually measured ones. KW - Beton KW - Rissbildung KW - Bildanalyse KW - Maschinelles Lernen KW - Mikroskopie KW - concrete KW - crack KW - degradation KW - transmitted light microscopy Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:gbv:wim2-20220811-46754 UR - https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jmi.13091 VL - 2022 IS - Volume 286, Issue 2 SP - 154 EP - 159 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Müller, Matthias A1 - Ludwig, Horst-Michael A1 - Tange Hasholt, Marianne T1 - Salt frost attack on concrete: the combined effect of cryogenic suction and chloride binding on ice formation JF - Materials and Structures N2 - Scaling of concrete due to salt frost attack is an important durability issue in moderate and cold climates. The actual damage mechanism is still not completely understood. Two recent damage theories—the glue spall theory and the cryogenic suction theory—offer plausible, but conflicting explanations for the salt frost scaling mechanism. The present study deals with the cryogenic suction theory, which assumes that freezing concrete can take up unfrozen brine from a partly frozen deicing solution during salt frost attack. According to the model hypothesis, the resulting saturation of the concrete surface layer intensifies the ice formation in this layer and causes salt frost scaling. In this study an experimental technique was developed that makes it possible to quantify to which extent brine uptake can increase ice formation in hardened cement paste (used as a model material for concrete). The experiments were carried out with low temperature differential scanning calorimetry, where specimens were subjected to freeze–thaw cycles while being in contact with NaCl brine. Results showed that the ice content in the specimens increased with subsequent freeze–thaw cycles due to the brine uptake at temperatures below 0 °C. The ability of the hardened cement paste to bind chlorides from the absorbed brine at the same time affected the freezing/melting behavior of the pore solution and the magnitude of the ice content. KW - Beton KW - Frost KW - Beton KW - Frostangriff KW - salt frost attack KW - cryogenic suction KW - chloride binding Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:gbv:wim2-20211207-45392 UR - https://link.springer.com/article/10.1617/s11527-021-01779-7 VL - 2021 IS - issue 54, article 189 SP - 1 EP - 16 ER -