Performance and Durability of Concrete Structures in Railway Environment under Extreme Climate

In railway systems, concrete materials and structures have been widely adopted in construction of various assets such as railway stations, platform, walkway, railway bridges, tunnelling, concrete sleepers, foundation of overhead wiring structures, etc. Climate conditions are very important influencing factors to the durability of concrete structures. The aim of is study is to evaluate the effect of climate change on the performance and durability of concrete structures based on a number of pertinent experimental and field data using statistical regression analysis. In fact, the study into the influence of elevated temperature on compressive strength and splitting tensile strength also has been carried out using experimental data on the basis of environmental temperature, relative humidity as well as CO2 concentration to the concrete carbonation and steel corrosion rates. The results indicate that environmental temperature, CO2 concentration and a certain range of relative humidity can influence the concrete carbonation rates. Temperature and relative humidity also play a significant role in rate of steel corrosion as well. Furthermore, there is nearly direct proportion between the environmental temperature and the concrete carbonation rates as well as corrosion rate of steel embedded in concrete from 25◦C to 60◦C and nearly inverse proportion between the environmental relative humidity and the concrete carbonization from 48.75% to 105%. In addition, the presented results also show that even in the extreme natural high temperature, the capacity of compressive strength and splitting tensile strength is not affected significantly.