Potentially Reactive Carbonate Rocks: A Review of Virginia Reports

About the report:

An expansive reaction between portland cement and certain siliceous aggregates has been known since the work of T. E. Stanton in the early nineteen forties. It was not until Woods, Sweet, and Shelburne (1945) bad correlated pavement blowups in Indiana with a few carbonate aggregate sources that certain limestones and dolomites were suspected of causing expansion when used in concrete. Swenson (1957) correlated deleterious expansion of concrete with a single carbonate aggregate source at Kingston, Ontario, and further noted that the degree of expansion could be correlated with the level of cement alkali. Subsequent to this work expansive alkali-carbonate rocks have been found and reported in Indiana (Hadley 1961), Virginia (Newlon and Sherwood 1962), and Missouri (Axon and Lind 1965).

The first indication that carbonate aggregates being quarried in Virginia were alkali reactive resulted from measurements obtained in 1957 from an instrumented bridge in Rockingham County. Abnormal expansions from both the bridge deck and a companion beam were indicated. Subsequent lab and field investigations led to the drafting of a working plan (Newlon 1961) designed to locate and study potentially reactive carbonate rocks in Virginia.

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