Use of ammonium nitrate solution to simulate and accelerate the leaching of cement pastes due to deionized water

Studies in the laboratory on the durability of concrete are not easy to perform, particularly in the case ofa linkage between a chemical attack and a mechanical property variation. As a result, these studies require significant experimentation times because on the one hand the kinetics ofchemical degradation are very slow, and on the other hand the sample size has to be adapted to the aggregate size. One of the possibilities for solving these problems consists of developing accelerated tests allowing one to reproduce the real degradation undergone by the concrete during its history. This paper deals with the use of strongly concentrated ammonium nitrate solutions as an accelerated method for the degradation of cement-based materials by deionized water. The direct application of this work is to the durability ofconcrete containers used to store radioactive wastes.