RESEARCH ARTICLE


Deicer Impacts on Pavement Materials: Introduction and Recent Developments



Xianming Shi*, 1, 2, Michelle Akin1, Tongyan Pan1, Laura Fay1, Yajun Liu 1, Zhengxian Yang 1
1 Corrosion and Sustainable Infrastructure Laboratory, Western Transportation Institute, PO Box 174250, College of Engineering, Montana State University, Bozeman, MT 59717-4250, USA
2 Civil Engineering Department, 205 Cobleigh Hall, Montana State University, Bozeman, MT 59717-2220, USA


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Creative Commons License
© 2009 Shi et. al

open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

* Address correspondence to this author at the Civil Engineering Department, 205 Cobleigh Hall, Montana State University, Bozeman, MT 59717- 2220, USA; Tel: 406-994-6486; Fax: 406-994-1697; E-mail: xianming_s@coe.montana.edu


Abstract

A review of the impacts of deicers used in winter maintenance practices of Portland cement concrete and asphalt concrete roadways and airport pavements is presented. Traditional and relatively new deicers are incorporated in this review, including sodium chloride, magnesium chloride, calcium chloride, calcium magnesium acetate, potassium acetate, potassium formate, sodium acetate, and sodium formate. The detrimental effects of deicers on Portland cement concrete exist through three main pathways: 1) physical deterioration such as salt scaling; 2) chemical reactions between deicers and cement paste (a cation-oriented process, especially in the presence of magnesium chloride and calcium chloride); and 3) deicers aggrevating aggregate-cement reactions (such as the anion-oriented process in the case of chlorides, acetates, and formates affecting alkali-silica reactivity and the cation-oriented process in the case of calcium chloride and magnesium chloride affecting alkali-carbonate reactivity). The deicer impacts on asphalt concrete pavements had been relatively mild until acetate- and formate-based deicers were introduced in recent years. The damaging mechanism seems to be a combination of chemical reactions, emulsifications and distillations, as well as the generation of additional stress in the asphalt concrete.