Monitoring the decrease of abrasion resistance on natural building stones due to deterioration caused by freezing and thawing cycles

Natural building stones, used as floor cladding stones in outdoor applications in cold regions, are negatively affected by freezing and thawing processes, and this reduces the service life of the stone. The aim of this study is to reveal the change of abrasion resistance of natural stones determined by the wide wheel abrasion test ( W A ) with laboratory freeze–thaw (FT) tests. For this purpose, FT tests were applied up to 84 cycles on 23 groups of samples, mainly consisted of carbonate rocks. According to the results, no significant decrease was determined in the dry unit weight ( γ d ) value, but significant decreases were obtained in open porosity ( n ) and P-wave velocity ( V P ) values. It has been revealed that W A values are also significantly affected by increasing FT cycles and increased up to about 14%. It was concluded that the increase was evident up to 35 FT cycles, and after this level, the increase continued with a decrease.