Immediately after completion airfield pavements begin a gradual deterioration that is attribute to several
factors. One of the major elements contribute to airfield pavement deterioration is exposure to the environment (freezingthawing
and de-icing salts). Air-voids microstructure in cement-based materials is an important feature related to the
freeze-thaw durability of these materials since all the adverse influences are result of potentially harmful ionic fluids
and aggressive gas transport through the concrete and the transport properties strongly depend on the morphology of the
pores inside the concrete.
For revealing the porous microstructure in airfield pavement concrete X-ray tomography method was used. New and
advance methodologies have been developed to determine the basic parameters of air entrainment in concrete (total
content of the air, specific surface area of the air-voids system, spacing factor and content of micropores) by summing
the distances traversed across a given component along a series of regularly spaced lines in one or more planes
intersecting the sample. Using the method mentioned above, to meet requirements of PN-EN 480-11 specification
(describes procedure for microscopical determination of air voids characteristics in hardened concrete), the original
software was applied – AVCT (Air Void by Computed Tomography) computer programme.
The specimens for CT testing were cylinders extracted by drilling out from the investigated concrete core or cubic
specimen. The CT method does not require any special processing of the surface of tested specimen as opposed the
common method according to PN-EN 480-11, by which the properly polished section is a prerequisite for obtaining
proper results of air voids characterization.
The paper presents the results of the evaluation of air-voids microstructure in concrete conducted with the application
of computed tomography method. Exemplary images of distribution and size of air-voids in concrete specimens have
been presented. Special attention was paid to obtain effective image resolution.
Determination of regional lung air volume distribution at mid-tidal breathing from computed tomography: a retrospective study of normal variability and reproducibility
