Consideration on the Risk of Corrosion Assessment in Reinforced Concrete Structure by Corrosion Potential Criterion

Abstract

Corrosion of steel reinforcement is a major factor in the deterioration of harbour and bridge structure. Steel corrosion in concrete must be checked for assessing the condition of a reinforced concrete structure. There are several ways how to measure the corrosion condition of reinforced concrete, but the corrosion potential measurement is a very simple, rapid, cost-effective and non-destructive technique to evaluate the severity of corrosion in reinforced concrete structure, therefore commonly used by engineers. However some particular situations may not relate to the reinforcement corrosion probability and a simple comparison of the corrosion potential data with the ASTM C876 Standard on steel reinforcement corrosion probability could be meaningless and not give reliable informations because of environment factors as oxygen concentration, chloride content, concrete resistance. Therefore this paper explains the risk of corrosion assessment in reinforced concrete structure and how many factors can affect the reliability of the corrosion potential data.

Corrosion Monitoring of Reinforced Steel Embedded in Cement Mortar under Wet-And-Dry Cycles by Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy

“…Corrosion potential is affected by several structural (stress, roughness, groove, and shape) and environmental (ventilation, temperature, moisture content, and salinity) factors. Most of the methods can only be applied on a laboratory scale that would imply an inaccurate determination of the on-site information on rebar corrosion such as imprecise assessment of corrosion rates [9]. In theoretical and experimental terms, a significant correlation has been established between the polarization resistance and corrosion current density.…”