Estudo da fissuração de concretos refratários durante o processo de cura auxiliado pela técnica de correlação de imagens digitais

Abstract

The growing demand of the steel industry for cheaper and more efficient production processes creates a necessity for new refractory materials. These requirements are written in terms of more robust concretes, with a longer life cycle, and ease of installation and maintenance. New materials that fulfill these criteria are the Mgo-based refractory castable. However, during curing and drying stages these materials have a critical magnesia hydration reaction that can lead to damage and cracks. The resonance measurement of elastic modulus technique is one of the techniques used to study the effects of magnesia hydration on the castables. As an alternative to this technique is proposed a digital image correlation (DIC) method to monitor the cracks network evolution of refractory castables during the curing stage. Samples (CDPs) of freshly molded castables were subjected to a controlled environment to cure and to dry and images were captured of CDPs with a high resolution digital camera. The DIC is an optical full-field displacement measurement technique. This method is based on the registration of digital images recorded in the undeformed and deformed configurations to measure displacements. A Correli-Q4 based software were developed to detect the cracks and measures their surface crack density and its average crack opening in the sample. The study of some variables such as the paint technique used in the samples (required for application of the CID technique) and the positioning of samples within the thermal chamber were required to evaluate the robustness of the software. As a result of that effort it was possible to compare the CID technique with resonance measurement of elastic modulus. The conclusion is that both detect simultaneously the cracks network beginning. The results claim that the DIC technique is promising because it promotes possibility of measure and compare parameters relative to the crack network (surface crack density and average crack opening) for different compositions of castables, temperatures and relative humidity maintained during curing. The analysis of these cracks network paraviii meters was consistent with the theory in the literature demonstrating the potential of the proposed method.