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Abstract
This thesis reports a research of the corrosion mechanism and corrosion rate of steel reinforcement in concrete. Experimental results are presented to compare the corrosion behaviours of steel reinforcement in two blended-cement concretes in seawater. The experimental program included a study of the influence of crack width on macrocell corrosion, an investigation of the procedure for the determination of polarisation curves of steel in concrete and, an evaluation of the corrosion rate of steel in concrete and the influence of crack width as determined by a new polarisation curve analysis.
A mechanism is proposed to interpret the different influences, in both the short and long term, of concrete crack width on the macrocell corrosion rate. This mechanism is based on the finding that the corrosion-spread phenomenon is caused by polarisation effects. An oxygen-depletion mechanism is also proposed to explain the much lower macrocell corrosion rate in the slag cement concrete than that in the flyash cement concrete.
The procedure for polarisation testing of steel in concrete is found to be critical to obtaining correct polarisation curves. A twotest procedure is verified to be an appropriate procedure and used in this investigation. Experimental polarisation curves of steel in concrete are found to be very different to those expressed by the kinetic Butler-Volmer equation and, this is considered to be a result of the influence of the passive film on the steel surface in concrete.
An empirical polarisation formula is developed and its interpretation is based on the postulation of two parallel kinetic processes occurring at the steel/passive-film/concrete interface; one is the active corrosion process and the other is the film growth/dissolution process. The formula is used to model experimental polarisation curves of steel in concrete through curvefitting analyses. Good curve-fitting results are obtained between the polarisation test curves and model curves. The results are used for evaluation of the corrosion rate and Tafel behaviours of steel in the two concretes and for assessment of the influence of crack width on the corrosion rate within the crack zone.