Correlations between the Strength and Electrical Resistance of Concrete. Part 1. A Brief Overview

Introduction. The existing methods of non-destructive testing of concrete strength entail access to the concrete surface, which is not always possible to accomplish in concrete work technology. E.g., while continuously forming a structure in a sliding formwork, it is required that the strength of the concrete is identified during the molding process with no direct access to the layers of the hardening concrete mix being laid. The well-known method of identifying concrete strength by means of measuring its electrical resistance is neither commonly used nor standardized, and tends to yield contradictory results. The aim of the study of the first part of the article is to investigate the previously identified correlations between the concrete strength and its electrical resistance, to identify the advantages and disadvantages of measurement methods in order to find how feasible such an approach is for identifying a method for sinking concrete.

Materials and Methods. The classical method of literature review is employed with grouping of certain features into separate comparative tables followed by generalization assisting understanding an extent to which the research topic has been studied. Those were only the most important and informative, largely foreign, sources that were selected from the reviewed sources.

Research Results. The analysis of the review data enabled us to identify the methods of measuring electrical resistance (surface, volumetric, internal, direct ones), types of the investigated concrete, sample sizes, test dates, concrete strength ranges, types of dependencies and correlation coefficients. Among the factors affecting the measurement result were the following: water-cement ratio, type of binder and aggregates, type of additives, temperature of concrete, its porosity, etc. To explain the essence of the methods for identifying concrete electrical resistance, a brief overview is provided.

Discussion and Conclusion. The major difficulty of the indirect methods of identifying the strength lies in designing calibration dependencies with the results affected by a wide range of factors. There are also some difficulties with fastening of ohmic contacts to the formwork or concrete. All of these will be accounted for in follow-up studies to identify the relationship between the concrete strength and electrical resistance and to improve the measurement accuracy. The advantages of the method of strength control, such as maintaining the integrity of the structure, efficiency and low measurement complexity enable it to be employed in automated concrete technologies.

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