TY - JOUR A1 - Millar, Steven A1 - Gottlieb, Cassian A1 - Sankat, Nina A1 - Wilsch, Gerd A1 - Kruschwitz, Sabine T1 - Chlorine determination in cement-bound materials with Laser-induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) – A review and validation JF - Spectrochimica Acta Part B-Atomic Spectroscopy N2 - The determination of chloride is still one of the main tasks for the evaluation of reinforced concrete structures. The corrosion of the reinforcement induced by the penetrating chlorides is the dominant damage process affecting the lifetime of concrete structures. In the recent years different research groups demonstrated that LIBS can be a fast and reliable method to quantify chlorine in cement-bound materials. Because chlorine in concrete can only occur as solved ions in the pore solution or bound in salts or hydrated cement phases, the detected emission of chlorine can be correlated with the chloride concentration determined e.g. with potentiometric titration. This work inter alia describes the production of reference samples and possible side effects during the production process. Due to transport processes in the porous matrix of the cement a misinterpretation of the concentrations is possible. It is shown how to overcome these effects and higher precisions of the single measurements can be realised. Using the calibration method, blank sample method and noise method, three different ways of calculating the limit of detection (LOD) and limit of quantification (LOQ) are compared. Due to the preparation of the reference samples a precision of the whole calibration model of sx0 = 0.023 wt% is determined. The validation of the model is based on different test sets, which are varying in their composition (different Cl-salts, water-to-cement ratios and additives). The determined mean error of the validation is 0.595 ± 0.063 wt%, which is comparable to standardised methods like potentiometric titration, direct potentiometry or photometry (0.40 ± 0.06 wt%) [1]. KW - LIBS KW - Chlorine KW - Cement KW - Calibration KW - Validation PY - 2018 DO - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sab.2018.05.015 SN - 0584-8547 VL - 147 IS - September SP - 1 EP - 8 PB - Elsevier B.V. CY - Amsterdam AN - OPUS4-46558 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Millar, Steven A1 - Kruschwitz, Sabine A1 - Wilsch, Gerd T1 - Determination of total chloride content in cement pastes with laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) JF - Cement and Concrete Research N2 - The presented work discusses the accuracy of Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) in determining the total chloride content in cement pastes. LIBS as an emission spectroscopy method is used to detect simultaneously several elements present in cement-based materials. By scanning surfaces the variability in the spatial distribution of elements can be visualised. However, for a quantification of the results, studies are necessary to characterise possible influences due to the wide variation of the chemical compositions in which cement can occur. It is shown how the calibration can be done, how the calibration samples were produced, and which statistical parameters are necessary to describe the precision of the regression. The performance of LIBS is estimated by detecting chloride in validation samples. Therefore, 55 samples and 7 ets with changing mix ompositions were produced. The presented study deals with possible influences of different mix compositions, ncluding different cations of chloride, varying w/c-ratios and the artial replacement of Portland cement with last furnace slag (50% BFS) and limestone (30% LS). Comparing the LIBS results with otentiometric titration, n accuracy of±0.05 wt%/total has been determined. KW - Spectroscopy KW - LIBS KW - Chloride KW - Quantification KW - Cement PY - 2019 DO - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cemconres.2018.12.001 SN - 0008-8846 VL - 117 IS - March SP - 16 EP - 22 PB - Elsevier CY - Amsterdam AN - OPUS4-47059 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Völker, Tobias A1 - Millar, Steven A1 - Strangfeld, Christoph A1 - Wilsch, Gerd T1 - Identification of type of cement through laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy JF - Construction and Building Materials N2 - The composition of concrete determines its resistance to various degradation mechanisms such as ingress of ions, carbonation or reinforcement corrosion. Knowledge of the composition of the hardened concrete is therefore helpful to assess the remaining service life of an existing structure or evaluate the damage observed during inspections. For example, for most existing concrete structures the type of cement originally used is not known and must therefore be determined afterwards. This paper presents a preliminary study on the application of laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) to identify the type of cement. For this purpose, ten different types of cement were investigated. For every type, three cement paste prisms were produced: (i) prisms dried, ground and pressed into tablets, (ii) prisms dried and (iii) prisms untreated. LIBS measurements were performed with a diode-pumped low energy laser (1064 nm, 3 mJ, 1.5 ns, 100 Hz) in combination with two compact spectrometers which cover the UV and NIR spectral range. A reduced subset of spectral features was used to build a classification model based on linear discriminant analysis. The results show that the classification of homogenized pressed cement powder samples provides a high accuracy, however, factors such as a different sample matrix and moisture content can affect the accuracy of the classification. The study demonstrates that LIBS is a promising tool to identify the type of cement. KW - Spectroscopy KW - LIBS KW - Cement KW - Classification KW - Identification PY - 2020 DO - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.conbuildmat.2020.120345 VL - 258 SP - 120345 PB - Elsevier Ltd. AN - OPUS4-51157 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Völker, Tobias A1 - Wilsch, Gerd A1 - Gornushkin, Igor B. A1 - Kratochvilo, L. A1 - Pořízka, P. A1 - Kaiser, J. A1 - Millar, S. A1 - et al., T1 - Interlaboratory comparison for quantitative chlorine analysis in cement pastes with laser induced breakdown spectroscopy JF - Spectrochimica Acta Part B N2 - Concrete structures experience severe damage during service, for example due to pitting corrosion of rebars caused by the ingress of chlorine (Cl) into the porous concrete structure. The ingress can be monitored using laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS), a recently introduced civil engineering technique used to detect Cl in concrete structures in addition to conventional wet chemistry methods. The key advantages of LIBS are high spatial resolution, which is important when analyzing heterogeneous concrete samples, as well as the almost complete absence of sample preparation. To assess LIBS as a reliable analytical method, its accuracy and robustness must be carefully tested. This paper presents the results of an interlaboratory comparison on the analysis of Cl in cement paste samples conducted by 12 laboratories in 10 countries. Two sets of samples were prepared with Cl content ranging from 0.06 to 1.95 wt% in the training set and 0.23–1.51 wt% in the test set, with additional variations in the type of cement and Cl source (salt type). The overall result shows that LIBS is suitable for the quantification of the studied samples: the average relative error was generally below 15%. The results demonstrate the true status quo of the LIBS method for this type of analysis, given that the laboratories were not instructed on how to perform the analysis or how to process the data. KW - LIBS KW - Interlaboratory comparison KW - Round robin test KW - Cement KW - Chlorine PY - 2023 DO - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sab.2023.106632 SN - 0584-8547 VL - 202 SP - 1 EP - 8 PB - Elsevier B.V. AN - OPUS4-57102 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -