Thermal Shock Damage in Construction Materials: Impact and prediction of concrete and natural rocks behavior

Building materials generally perform poorly in a high temperature environment. Residential fires and fires in road tunnels are common occurrences. Furthermore, some factories have no option besides exposing their infrastructure to very high temperatures due to the nature of their operation logistics. Therefore, there is a clear need for developing structural materials that can withstand high temperatures ensuring safety during such events. The present thesis deals with thermal shock damage in construction materials. Specifically, the first half of the thesis focuses on the development of an structural material that would fare well on severe cyclic thermal shock conditions found in a steel factory. The second half aims to improve the capacity of engineers and scientists to predict whether a concrete of a given mixture would suffer from spalling under certain heating conditions. Initially, a review of the main effects and chemical changes caused by high temperature was performed on the conventional building materials, followed by some novel materials being currently explored by the civil engineering scientific community. This aided in the pre-selection of material to be tested at later stages. Further, existing theories concerning high temperature spalling, the causes and the main methods of mitigation were reviewed.