Modeling of Chloride Concentration Effect on Reinforcement Corrosion

Abstract

The corrosion of reinforcement is one of the major causes of deterioration of reinforced concrete (RC) structures, considerably affecting their durability and reliability. The rate of reinforcement corrosion is governed by, among other factors, the presence of chlorides on the surface of the steel. The assessment of such deteriorating effects necessitates the development of relevant models and the utilization of advanced simulation techniques to enable the probabilistic analysis of concrete structures. In this article an approach for the assessment of the durability and reliability of RC structures under attack from chlorides is introduced. The field of chloride concentration at different locations in the structure (represented in 2D space by chosen longitudinal or cross sections) is modeled as a function of time by a cellular automata (CA) technique. The results of this simulation are then utilized for the assessment of a steel corrosion prognosis using a probabilistic 1D model at chosen points, although the rate of corrosion is based on experimental results. The concentrations of chlorides and pH levels are reflected in this way. The described approach is applied to an illustrative example showing the feasibility of capturing the effect of chloride concentration on the steel corrosion rate and consequently on the assessment of the service life and/or reliability of the structure.

A Stochastic Computational Framework to Investigate the Initial Stage of Corrosion in Reinforced Concrete Superstructures

“…Such significant variations explain the necessity of considering both temporal and spatial uncertainties in the investigation of deterioration processes. More recent studies have demonstrated the advantages of incorporating the variability of the involved parameters into the predictive models (e.g., Sudret et al, ; Vorechovska et al, ; Choi and Seo, ; Zhang and Gao, ; Cusson et al, ). These studies indicate how the estimation of the likelihood and extent of corrosion damage can be improved when the influential parameters are treated as random variables.…”

Safety analysis and reliability assessment of engineering structures – The success story of SARA

“…Models for carbonation , chloride ingress , reinforcement corrosion as well as for acid and frost attack are provided. Recently, some new issues have been studied and integrated into FReET‐D, namely models for deterioration due to biogenic sulfuric acid and models for synergy of concrete carbonation or chloride and mechanical load effects .…”

“…The Models for carbonation [22], chloride ingress [17,23,24], reinforcement corrosion [25] as well as for acid and frost attack are provided.…”

Probabilistic Modeling of Chloride Penetration with Respect to Concrete Heterogeneity and Epoxy-Coating on the Reinforcement

“…Durability of concrete exposed to aggressive agents has been a worldwide research topic in recent decades [1][2][3][4][5]. Such agents are chloride ions that reduce the long-term durability of reinforced concrete (RC) structures during their service lifetime.…”