Earlier on-site investigations and laboratory studies have shown that varying corrosion rates are obtained when different commercially available instruments are used. The different confinement techniques, rather than the different electrochemical techniques used in the instruments, are considered to be the main reason for the discrepancies. This paper presents a method for the quantitative assessment of confinement techniques. The assessment is based on monitoring the operation of the corrosion rate instrument and following the current distribution between the electrode assembly on the concrete surface and a segmented reinforcement bar embedded in the concrete. The applicability of the method was demonstrated for two commercially available corrosion rate instruments based on different confinement techniques. The method provided an explanation of the differences in performance of the two instruments. Correlated measurements of linear polarisation resistance and macro-cell currents allowed the determination of calibration factors. Both instruments overestimated the corrosion rate of passive reinforcement, but underestimated the corrosion rate of reinforcement with intense localised corrosion
Both on‐site investigations and laboratory studies have shown that different corrosion rates are obtained when different commercially available corrosion rate instruments are used. The different electrochemical techniques and the measurement parameters used, i.e. polarisation current and time, are in some studies considered the main reasons for the variations. This paper presents an experimental study on the quantitative effect of polarisation time and current on the measured polarisation resistance – and thus the corrosion current density – of passively and actively corroding steel. Two electrochemical techniques often used in instruments for on‐site corrosion rate measurements are investigated. On passively corroding reinforcement the measured polarisation resistance was for both techniques found to be highly affected by the polarisation time and current and no plateaus at either short or long polarisation times, or low or high polarisation currents were identified. On actively corroding reinforcement a large effect of the polarisation time was also found, but only a minor effect of the polarisation current. The effect of the polarisation time was, however, practically independent of the corrosion rate for actively corroding steel. For both techniques guidelines for polarisation times and currents are given for (on‐site) non‐destructive corrosion rate measurements on reinforcement steel in concrete.
Full surface surveys which are likely to include e.g. a deterioration and potential mapping as well as a cover depth survey, should be the base to identify critical areas which are suspect to be suffering from reinforcement corrosion [1]. Localised assessment in these areas should give further information about the type and extent of deterioration. It should include the determination of the chloride profile beyond the cover depth, the depth of carbonation and a direct visual assessment of the steel reinforcement by breaking away the cover concrete at selected locations. Further valuable information may be collected by determining the water content of the concrete or performing corrosion rate measurements. Within this publication the essential methods for local detailed inspections are discussed regarding the application and interpretation of the results. An overview of the survey procedure is given in ref. [2].
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