Cross sea bridges, underwater tunnels, offshore airports.
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The “bone collagen” of these marine concrete structures – hydrated calcium silicate C-S-H – is being gradually dismantled at the nanoscale by two “invisible killers” in seawater (sulfate SO42- and magnesium ion Mg2+).
The latest research by Wu Kai and Xu Linglin from Tongji University, using 9 types of C-S-H combined with molecular dynamics (MD) shear simulations, has for the first time seen how this “collapse” occurs at the atomic level.
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