Physical characterization of reinforcing bar corrosion in concrete

Chloride induced corrosion, caused primarily by de-icing salts and/or salt spray from marine environments, is one of the most common deterioration processes in reinforced concrete. It often causes a lo-calized loss of section, known as pitting, which can lead to a significant reduction of the structure’s service life. In order to predict the impact of this phenomenon on the mechanical properties of the reinforcing bars in concrete a thorough analysis of its characteristics is needed. At present, most of the models found in literature describe uniform corrosion and those that do address localized corrosion focus on a simplified definition of the reduced cross-sectional area of corroded rebars without due attention to actual physical characteristics and spatial variability. This may be attributed to the limitations of current non-automated and largely heuristic methods used in evaluating the corrosion characteristics on the surface of reinforcement. Automation of the evaluation method could allow the creation and development of comprehensive corrosion models which con-sider both systematic and random features of the deterioration process. In this paper, a preliminary study to characterize geometrically chloride induced corrosion is presented, together with the steps envisaged in order to develop an improved chloride induced corrosion model.