Entropy evolution during crack propagation in concrete under sulfate attack

Abstract

In this paper, the corrosion experiment of concrete showed that the length and orientation of cracks, as well as their propagation direction are randomly distributed. By virtue of SEM and XRD techniques, the growth of delayed ettringite was detected, which leads to expansion stress and then induces the nucleation and propagation of cracks. To investigate the statistical characteristics of cracks, the concept of information entropy was adopted. Furthermore, based on the entropy evolution at different corrosion times and the chemical reaction rate of delayed ettringite, a model for entropy evolution was proposed. It is shown that the normalized entropy exponentially increases with the non-dimensional corrosion time.