A critical examination of corrosion rate measurement techniques applied to reinforcing steel in concrete

Abstract

This paper presents an investigation of five corrosion‐monitoring techniques for reinforced concrete. The techniques studied are the potentiodynamic, galvanostatic, and coulostatic direct‐current techniques as well as electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS), and the connectionless electrical pulse response analysis (CEPRA) technique. The study included monitoring corrosion rates on reinforced concrete specimens with a range of admixed chloride percentages, cover depths, and rebar diameters for 8 months. After this period, the rebars were extracted for mass loss measurements to determine the average corrosion rates. EIS was found to provide accurate measurements of active and passive corrosion rates with a simplified spectrum‐analysis procedure. Galvanostatic and potentiodynamic techniques were able to measure the corrosion rates for actively corroding reinforcements accurately, while the coulostatic technique overestimated it. For passive reinforcements, the coulostatic technique provided reliable corrosion rate estimates, while the potentiodynamic technique provided a minor overestimation, due to the fast scan rate used, and the galvanostatic technique failed in detecting passivity, due to the short measurement duration and confinement failure. Finally, the CEPRA technique provided accurate corrosion rate predictions except for passive rebars with small diameters embedded in saturated concrete.