Empirical models of corrosion rate prediction of steel in reinforced concrete structures

Abstract

Corrosion rate is one of the most important input parameters in corrosion-induced damage prediction models as well as in calculation of service-life for reinforced concrete structures. In most cases, instantaneous measurements or constant corrosion rate values used in damage prediction models is irrelevant. The new factors appearing such as corrosion-induced cover cracking, concrete quality to change the corrosion rate should be taken into consideration. This study shows several empirical models to predict the corrosion rate and their limits of application. The predicted values of steel corrosion rate using four empirical models are compared with the measured values of a series of 55 experimental samples collected from the literature. The results show that the empirical models overestimated the experimental corrosion rate. Using model proposed by Liu and Weyers provided the best agreement with the experimental data.
 Keywords:
 corrosion rate; prediction model; reinforced concrete; chloride ions; reinforcement corrosion.