Corrosion measurements of carbonated and chloride-contaminated reinforced concrete components

Part of a study to determine the suitability of surface coatings and other alternative protection mechanisms for prolonging the service life of structures suffering from reinforcement corrosion involved in-situ monitoring of well characterised structural elements. Corrosion of the reinforcement of the concrete elements was caused by chloride contamination or carbonation of the concrete. The work enabled the study of the reinforcement over a period of some years by potential mapping, potential monitoring using embeddable silver/silver chloride reference electrodes and linear polarisation using the 'GECOR-6' device. Generally, the potential and corrosion intensity values correlated well either with the internal relative humidity of the carbonated columns or the expected corrosion activity suggested by the chloride concentration profile of the laboratory-produced concrete. Some monitoring problems were experienced.