Case studies of concrete deterioration in a marine environment in Portugal

Abstract

The long-term behaviour of concrete structures has shown that their main cause of distress is reinforcement corrosion. One of the most aggressive exposure conditions for concrete is the marine environment. In these conditions chloride penetration and chloride-induced reinforcement corrosion rates can be very high, often leading to a reduced service life. This paper describes a series of case studies of different types of concrete structures, subject to several exposure conditions in the marine environment, that suffered extensive deterioration due to chloride-induced corrosion. Several degrees of deterioration associated with different exposure conditions are described and different types of corrosion both in reinforced and prestressed concrete structures are illustrated.