Studying the abrasion damage of concrete for hydraulic structures under various flow conditions

Concrete abrasion is a durability problem especially for hydraulic structures, which is caused by physical damage mainly due to hard abrasive particles and water impacting against the concrete surface. In this study, a home-made test setup was adopted to investigate the abrasion damage under various similar-to-the-field flow conditions. A new abrasion measurement and analysis method was introduced where a three-dimensional (3D) scanner was used to re-construct the abraded surface profile digitally, which enabled detailed evaluation on not only the maximum abrasion depth but also the distribution of the depths and the corresponding abraded areas. The abrasion resistance of four concrete mixtures was studied, together with the effects of changing abrasive particles in testing, sediment contents, flow velocity, and impact angle of the flow on concrete surface. Based on the obtained experimental results, in-depth discussions were presented. In addition, a modified mathematical model was proposed to predict concrete material loss due to abrasion with demonstrated reliability and applicability.