Abstract
Reinforced concrete is widely used in the construction of buildings, historical monuments and also nuclear power plants. For various reasons, many concrete structures are subject to unavoidable cracks that accelerate the diffusion of atmospheric carbon dioxide to the steel/concrete interface. Carbonation at the interface induces steel corrosion that may cause the development of new cracks in the structure, and this is a determining factor for its durability. It is therefore important to accurately characterize the length of the load-induced damage along the steel/concrete interface in order to understand the effect of cracking on corrosion initiation and propagation. The aim of this paper is to present an experimental procedure that allows the load-induced damage length to be assessed. The procedure consists in subjecting specimens to accelerated carbonation and determining the length of the carbonated steel/mortar interface, which is assumed to be equal to the length of the damaged steel/mortar interface. Suitable conditions should therefore be found for the accelerated carbonation in order to obtain an accurate characterization of the damaged steel/mortar interface length. To this end, two carbonation concentrations (3, 50%) and several carbonation durations were tested. The results indicate that a strong carbonation shrinkage phenomenon develops at high carbon dioxide concentration and leads to new cracking along the steel/mortar interface. These cracks allow the carbon dioxide to spread along the interface over a length greater than the damaged length. This is not the case when the accelerated carbonation test is performed at lower carbon dioxide concentration. Consequently, accelerated carbonation at high carbon dioxide concentration (50%) cannot be used neither for the estimation of the length of the mechanically damaged steel/mortar interface nor for the carbonation-induced corrosion studies because it will lead to an overestimation of the size of the corroded area.
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