Performance evaluation of rebar in chloride contaminated concrete by corrosion rate

The presence of chloride ions in reinforced concrete (RC) plays a major role in reinforcement corrosion and hence for the durability and service life of RC structures. With growing concern towards the deterioration of reinforced concrete structures, the use of electrochemical techniques for their performance evaluation has become an important topic of durability study. This paper illustrates the findings of an experimental investigation carried out on large number of specimens for evaluating the performance of different types of rebar in chloride contaminated concrete made with different types of cement through different corrosion rate techniques. The specimens were prepared with three types of cement and three types of steel. From the results of corrosion rate, it was observed that the values of corrosion rate obtained by linear polarization resistance (LPR) technique with guard ring arrangement were in close agreement with those obtained by gravimetric method. On the other hand the corrosion rate values obtained by AC impedance spectroscopy were slightly lower than those obtained by LPR measurement. Further, correlations between different corrosion rate techniques were also obtained. From the results of analysis of variance (ANOVA), it was observed that chloride content has the strongest effect on corrosion rate as compared to other factors. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.