Unravelling the interplay between steel rebar corrosion rate and corrosion-induced cracking of reinforced concrete
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Published version
Author(s)
Korec, Evžen
Jirásek, Milan
Wong, Hong S
Martínez-Pañeda, Emilio
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Accelerated impressed current testing is the most common experimental method for assessing the susceptibility to corrosion-induced cracking, the most prominent challenge to the durability of reinforced concrete structures. Although it is well known that accelerated impressed current tests lead to slower propagation of cracks (with respect to corrosion penetration) than in natural conditions, which results in overestimations of the delamination/spalling time, the origins of this phenomenon have puzzled researchers for more than a quarter of a century. In view of recent experimental findings, it is postulated that the phenomenon can be attributed to the variability of rust composition and density, specifically to the variable ratio of the mass fractions of iron oxide and iron hydroxide-oxide, which is affected by the magnitude of the applied corrosion current density. Based on this hypothesis, a corrosion-induced cracking model for virtual impressed-current testing is presented. The simulation results obtained with the proposed model are validated against experimental data, showing good agreement. Importantly, the model can predict corrosion-induced cracking under natural conditions and thus allows for the calculation of a newly proposed crack width slope correction factor, which extrapolates the surface crack width measured during accelerated impressed current tests to corrosion in natural conditions.
Date Issued
2024-12
Date Acceptance
2024-08-20
Citation
Cement and Concrete Research, 2024, 186
ISSN
0008-8846
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Journal / Book Title
Cement and Concrete Research
Volume
186
Copyright Statement
© 2024 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
License URL
Identifier
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cemconres.2024.107647
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
107647
Date Publish Online
2024-09-02