Residual Service Life Prediction of Offshore Concrete Structures With Chloride-Induced Damage: The State of the Art

Abstract

Offshore oil and gas (O&G) production and process facilities (P&PFs) consist of concrete components and structures with steel reinforcement and pre-stressing tendons. They are vulnerable to deterioration due to chloride-induced damage from being exposed to the severe marine environment. The aforementioned deterioration creates significant challenges to the life extension analysis presently required for P&PFs located in the North Sea. Currently, maintenance work has been carried out via in-service inspection and condition monitoring to assure the structural integrity at a pre-specified level of P&PFs. In this context, the knowledge from existing models forms a basis for making quantitative predictions of the remaining service life of structures and components made of concrete. The service life of reinforced concrete structures in relation to reinforcement corrosion is usually modeled considering the initiation period and the corrosion propagation period. The formation of optimal proactive maintenance and repair strategies for corrosion-damaged reinforced concrete (RC) structures is highly dependent on the results of prediction models. The combination of both field (i.e. inspection) and laboratory data with numerical modeling helps the formulation of models for the prediction of the time to pre-defined limit states or to estimate the time for carrying out necessary maintenance and repair. This manuscript provides a review of the available methods for predicting the remaining service life of RC structures in relation to reinforcement corrosion. It also highlights suitable methods for predicting the remaining service life of offshore ageing concrete structures in a severe corrosive environment.