This paper reports the results of an experimental programme aimed at investigating the influence of fibre reinforcement on the corrosion process of conventional steel rebar embedded in cracked concrete and on the flexural behaviour of reinforced concrete beams. Un-and pre-cracked reinforced concrete beams were subjected to natural corrosion through cyclic exposure to a 10% chloride solution for a period of three years. Subsequently, flexural tests were carried out under three-point bending configuration. Gravimetric measurements showed higher corrosion levels for bars in plain concrete compared to fibre reinforced concrete, and visual inspection of the bars revealed that fibres promoted a more distributed corrosion pattern. From detailed examination of the bars through 3D laser scanning technique, the main parameter controlling the local corrosion level of individual pits appears to be the local interfacial conditions; grater loads during pre-cracking and repeated load cycles yielded greater cross-sectional losses. Moreover, there was a tendency for more localized corrosion in beams with open cracks, indicating a possible impact of crack width on the extension of corrosion. The results from the flexural tests showed a consistent increase of load capacity for fibre reinforced beams compared to their plain concrete counterparts but only a marginal influence of the fibres on the rotation capacity. Furthermore, the rotation capacity of the beams was found to decrease several times faster than the load capacity with increasing loss of rebar cross-sectional area.

This paper investigates, experimentally and numerically, the effect of fibre reinforcement on the initiation of corrosion-induced cracks in concrete and the bond behaviour of corroded reinforcement bars in fibre reinforced concrete. The fibres, due to their confining effect, contributed to delay crack initiation, improve the post-peak bond behaviour and retain the initial splitting strength for corrosion levels of up to 8%. The mechanisms for delayed crack initiation were explained through 3D finite element analyses of the experiments whereas a 1D model, using experimental bond-slip curves as an input, was employed to quantify the beneficial effect of fibres on the reinforcement anchorage length.

This paper reports results from experiments aimed at better understanding the influence of fibre dosage and fibre geometry on the AC frequency needed to determine the DC resistivity of cementitious materials containing steel fibres. Impedance spectroscopy and DC galvanodynamic measurements were performed on mortar prisms with varying fibre reinforcement to determine the matrix resistivity (related to ionic current within the pore solution) and composite resistivity (accounting for both ionic current and electronic current through the fibres). The results showed that adding steel fibres did not significantly affect the DC nor the AC matrix resistivity of the mortar prisms. However, the steel fibres yielded a drastic reduction of the frequency associated to the AC matrix resistivity from ~1 kHz in plain mortar to ~1 Hz in steel fibre reinforced mortar. These findings revealed the need to adequately adjust the frequency in AC resistivity measurements of steel fibre reinforced cementitious materials.

This paper presents results on corrosion characteristics of 66 rebars extracted from un-and precracked plain concrete and fibre-reinforced concrete (FRC) beams suffering from corrosion for more than 3 years. The influences of fibre reinforcement, flexural cracks, corrosion-induced cracks and loading condition on the maximum local corrosion level (defined as the maximum cross-sectional area loss percentage) and pit morphology were examined. With 3D-scanning, the corrosion characteristics were analysed, and pit types were classified based on the maximum local corrosion level and geometric parameters of pits. Corrosion pits were observed near some flexural cracks, while the bars at other cracks were free from corrosion. Most rebars in FRC had less maximum local corrosion level than those in plain concrete under the same loading condition and maximum flexural crack width. However, the maximum local corrosion level was not dependent on the maximum flexural crack width (0.1 and 0.4 mm). Longitudinal cracks (corrosion-induced cracks) aggravated the total steel loss and changed the pit morphology by promoting the pit length development. However, longitudinal cracks did not always form, even with severe pitting corrosion. A hypothesis about the time-dependent interplay between transverse and longitudinal cracks and corrosion development was proposed. Further studies on predicting the pitting corrosion evolution and experimental work on specimens exposed for longer periods are needed to understand and quantify the long-term durability of concrete structures reinforced with both conventional reinforcing bars and fibres.

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