Alkali-Silica Reaction of Concrete with Admixtures

The effects of calcium nitrite solution, fly ash, silica fume, and their combination on the alkali-silica reaction were studied experimentally according to ASTM C 227 (mortar bar test). To explore the mechanism of such effects, chemically combined water tests and X-ray diffraction examinations were also conducted. The microstructural information provided by these experiments was in agreement with the macroscopic observations. A neural network analysis was then conducted to study the feasibility of the prediction of a theoretical model. To solve the consequent nonlinear coupled equations, some globally convergent skills were adopted. The results showed that a cascade-correlation algorithm could produce reasonable outputs that coincide with the experimental results after proper training.