Corrosion Characteristics of Reinforced Steel Bar Emedded in Mortar Specimen(W/C:0.4) Aged 5 Years in Seawater

Abstract

Reinforced concrete structures have been increasingly widely used in numerous industrial fields. These structures are often exposed to severely corrosive environments such as sea water, contaminated water, acid rain, and the seashore. Thus, corrosion problems of the steel bars embedded in concrete are very important from a safety and economic point of view. In this study, the effects of cover thickness on the corrosion properties of reinforced steel bar embedded in mortar specimen were investigated using electrochemical methods such as corrosion potentials, polarization curves, cyclic voltammograms, galvanostat and potentiostat. Corrosion potentials shifted in the noble direction, and the value of AC impedance also exhibited a higher value with decreasing cover thickness, furthermore, polarization resistance also increased with decreasing cover thickness. This is probably that the thinner cover thickness, it is easy for the dissolved oxygen and chloride ion to intrude and diffuse to the steel bar, thereby making it easier to corrode on the steel surface compared to thicker cover thickness, which is resulted in forming the corrosive products on the steel surface. Therefore, it is considered that the corrosive products plays a role to provide nobler value of corrosion potential and higher value of impedance. Consequently, it seems that the corrosion resistance of inner steel bar may depend on mainly not cover thickness but the resistance polarization due to corrosive products in the case of immerged for 5 years in this experiment.