Immediately after completion airfield pavements begin a gradual deterioration that is attribute to severalfactors. One of the major elements contribute to airfield pavement deterioration is exposure to the environment (freezingthawingand de-icing salts). Air-voids microstructure in cement-based materials is an important feature related to thefreeze-thaw durability of these materials since all the adverse influences are result of potentially harmful ionic fluidsand aggressive gas transport through the concrete and the transport properties strongly depend on the morphology of thepores inside the concrete.For revealing the porous microstructure in airfield pavement concrete X-ray tomography method was used. New andadvance methodologies have been developed to determine the basic parameters of air entrainment in concrete (totalcontent of the air, specific surface area of the air-voids system, spacing factor and content of micropores) by summingthe distances traversed across a given component along a series of regularly spaced lines in one or more planesintersecting the sample. Using the method mentioned above, to meet requirements of PN-EN 480-11 specification(describes procedure for microscopical determination of air voids characteristics in hardened concrete), the originalsoftware was applied – AVCT (Air Void by Computed Tomography) computer programme.The specimens for CT testing were cylinders extracted by drilling out from the investigated concrete core or cubicspecimen. The CT method does not require any special processing of the surface of tested specimen as opposed thecommon method according to PN-EN 480-11, by which the properly polished section is a prerequisite for obtainingproper results of air voids characterization.The paper presents the results of the evaluation of air-voids microstructure in concrete conducted with the applicationof computed tomography method. Exemplary images of distribution and size of air-voids in concrete specimens havebeen presented. Special attention was paid to obtain effective image resolution.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3846/enviro.2017.108