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Early freezing of concrete is common in the construction of water conservancy projects in northern China. Early freezing damage induces the deterioration of the mechanical properties of concrete structures, which seriously affects the safety, stability, and service life of engineering structures. Through a laboratory uniaxial compression test and a computed tomography (CT) test, the influence law of freezing time and freezing temperature on the mechanical properties of concrete is analyzed herein. The three-dimensional pore structure of concrete at different freezing times is reconstructed. The pore distribution and pore structure characteristic parameters of concrete at different freezing times are studied. The correlation between mechanical properties and the pore structure of early frozen concrete is determined. The results show that with the delay of freezing time, the porosity of concrete test blocks increases first and then decreases. The average pore surface area primarily decreases and then increases. The average pore diameter increases with the trend of a quadratic parabola. The average pore form factor primarily decreases, then increases, and then decreases. The average pore surface area has the best correlation with the compressive strength and elastic modulus of early frozen concrete. The outcomes suggest that the average pore surface area should be preferred when constructing the mesoscopic damage index of early frozen concrete. Relevant results provide support for revealing the macro and micro damage mechanisms of early frozen concrete.

A fiber-array probe is designed to measure the damping behavior of a small perturbed shock wave in an opaque substance, by which the effective viscosity of substance under the condition of high temperature and high pressure can be constrained according to the flyer-impact technique. It shows that the measurement precision of the shock arrival time by using this technique is within 2 ns. To easily compare with the results given by electrical pin technique, the newly developed method is used to investigate the effective viscosity of aluminum (Al). The shear viscosity coefficient of Al is determined to be 1700 Pa·s at 71 GPa with a strain rate of 3.6 × 106 s−1, which is in good agreement with the results of other methods. The advantage of the new technique over the electrical pin one is that it is applicable for studying the non-conductive substances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]