Electrochemical Noise Measurement to Assess Corrosion of Steel Reinforcement in Concrete

Douglas Mills,Shengming Yang,Paul Lambert

doi:10.3390/ma14185392

Douglas Mills, Shengming Yang + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/ma14185392

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Journal: Materials	Publication Date: Sep 18, 2021
Citations: 2	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: University of Northampton, Sheffield Hallam University

Abstract

The electrochemical noise method (ENM) has previously been employed to monitor the corrosion of steel reinforcement in concrete. The development of solid-state Ag/AgCl-based probes and dedicated monitoring technology (ProCoMeter) now offers a wider range of ENM configurations. The present study involves the laboratory investigation of three mortar samples containing steel bars and varying additions of chloride, with a view to future field application. ENM could be used to provide corrosion information on reinforcement without the need to provide direct electrical connections to the steel and without the risk or inducing or increasing corrosion. In addition to half-cell potentials, measurements were made using ENM in three different probe configurations over a total test period of 90 days. The samples were then broken open and the bars extracted and cleaned. A comparison was then made between the calculated metal thickness loss obtained from the Rn values and the actual metal thickness loss. The results showed that each configuration was able to order the results in the expected manner, with the simple single substrate (SSS) arrangement providing the best correlation with direct measurements. The study is ongoing with the intention of measurements being obtained in situ on existing reinforced concrete structures.

Highlights

Introduction and David MBastidasElectrochemical techniques to assess the corrosion of steel in concrete have been used with varying success for many years
The results showed that both methods can effectively measure the corrosion of steel bars in concrete and have compatibility
Because there is no direct correlation between half-cell potential and and corrosion corrosion rate, rate, Because there is no direct correlation between half-cell potential further evaluation of the corrosion is limited to that of ranking risk and cannot be used on further evaluation of the corrosion is limited to that of ranking risk and cannot be used on its own to assess the rate at which the bars undergo section loss

Summary

Introduction

Introduction and David MBastidasElectrochemical techniques to assess the corrosion of steel in concrete have been used with varying success for many years. The following is a summary of selected papers directly relevant to the current investigation and highlights the lack of recent studies into the use of electrochemical noise as a method of determining corrosion in reinforced concrete. Videm [2] showed that there were difficulties in its use It has the disadvantage of being time-consuming because obtaining corrosion-related data requires low frequencies, which take a long time to measure. It was pointed out that the potential map only provides an indication of the apparent corrosion possibility It cannot directly generate local corrosion rates, and it cannot be used to provide such data without the development of additional mapping and computational models of concrete resistivity.

Results

Discussion

Conclusion