Passing Aged Years to Polarization Characteristics of the Steel Bar Embedded in Mortar Specimen (W/C:0.4)

Abstract

The structures of reinforced concrete has been extensively increased with rapid development of industrial society. Furthermore, these reinforced concretes are often exposed to severely corrosive environments such as sea water, contaminated water, acid rain and seashore etc.. Thus, the corrosion problem of a steel bar embedded in the concrete is very important in terms of the safety and economic points of view. In this study, a multiple mortar test specimen (W/C:0.4) that had six types of cover thickness was prepared and immerged in flowing seawater for five years. And the effects of cover thickness and immersion years on the corrosion properties of the steel bars were investigated using electrochemical methods such as measuring corrosion potential, anodic polarization curve, and impedance. At the beginning of immersion (0 year), corrosion potentials exhibited increasingly nobler value with increasing the cover thickness. However, after being immersed for 5 years, the corrosion potentials conversely shifted in the positive direction with decreasing the cover thickness. As a result, the relationships between corrosion potential and cover thickness were not in good agreement with each other after 5 years. In addition, after 5 years, the thinner cover thickness, the higher value of impedance at 0.01Hz. It is considered that corrosive products deposited on the surface of the steel bar embedded in mortar specimen in the case of thinner cover thickness played the role as a resistance polarization which resulted in decreasing the corrosion current density. Consequently, it seemed to be somewhat problem that evaluation on the corrosion property in reinforced steel would be estimated by only the corrosion potential measurement. Therefore, it is suggested that we should take into account various parameters such as cover thickness, corrosion potential, and immersed years etc. for its accurate assessment. Keywords : Cover thickness, Corrosion potential, Anodic polarization curve, Impedance, Resistance polarization