The influence of ion chloride on concretes made with sulfate-resistant cements and mineral admixtures

•We compared concretes cured in saturated calcium hydroxide versus sodium chloride solution.•The change in the mechanical and microstructural properties was not significant.•The free, bound and total chloride content was computed experimentally.•The proposed model, called Langmuir–Freundlich, showed the best fit to the experimental results.•The concretes with blast furnace slag cement and with silica fume showed the best performance.

The aim of this work is to study the influence of chloride ion in the mechanical, microstructural and chemical properties of concrete. For this purpose, four concrete mixes were designed, with two types of sulfate-resistant cement and two mineral admixtures (silica fume and fly ash). Furthermore, a chloride binding isotherm is offered that is compared with Freundlich and Langmuir models. This provides certain advantages in reproducing experimental results. According to such results, the properties do not present significant changes in all cases. The concretes with blast-furnace slag cement and with silica fume are those that present the best performance.