The most important parameter used to determine the frost resistance of concrete is the distance between air voids. The linear traverse method has been used to obtain this spacing factor as a representative distance parameter. One of the present authors has proposed a new method of evaluating the distance using point process statistics. In this study, the spacing factors independently obtained for 52 extant mixtures of concrete are compared with the characteristic distance defined by the nearest neighbor distance distribution function. For that, a procedure for obtaining the necessary parameters for the point process method from records of linear traverse measurements is proposed. There exists a strong correlation between the spacing factor and the characteristic distance. The difference between two distance parameters is at most a few tens of micrometers. Furthermore, the median distance simply defined by the nearest neighbor distance distribution function is also found to have a good correlation with the spacing factor. The characteristic distance or the median distance is representative of an air void system and is an alternate to the conventional spacing factor.

This paper is the English translation from the authors’ previous work [Igarashi, S., Taniguchi, M. and Yamashita, S., (2021). “Derivation of characteristic distances of the point process method from records of linear traverse measurement and their correlation with spacing factors.” Cement Science and Concrete Technology, 74, 131-138. (in Japanese)].