Print Email Facebook Twitter The influence of cracks on chloride-induced corrosion of reinforced concrete structures - development of the experimental set-up Title The influence of cracks on chloride-induced corrosion of reinforced concrete structures - development of the experimental set-up Author Blagojevic, A. Koleva, D.A. Walraven, J.C. Faculty Civil Engineering and Geosciences Department Structural Engineering Date 2014-02-19 Abstract Chloride-induced corrosion of steel reinforcement is one of the major threats to durability of reinforced concrete structures in aggressive environmental conditions. When the steel reinforcement starts to corrode, structures gradually lose integrity and service life is shortened. Cracks are inevitable in practice and they facilitate ingress of chloride ions, moisture and oxygen through the concrete cover. This work discusses the experimental set-up, developed with an emphasis on the effect of cracks on chloride-induced corrosion of reinforced concrete structures. The test series consist of 32 reinforced concrete beams (1500×100×150 mm), designed in manner to monitor both mechanical and corrosion (embedded steel, reference cells, counter electrodes) properties. Four-point bending was applied in order to induce cracks with predefined and variable width. The variable mean crack width, number of cracks and total crack width were investigated in correlation to different concrete cover and types of loading in the experiments. In order to simulate aggressive environment within the designed loading conditions, the specimens were exposed to alternating wetting and drying cycles i.e. once a week for 2 days ponding using a 3.5 % NaCl solution and a 5 days drying phase. The half-cell potential and linear polarization resistance methods were applied for assessing the corrosion state of the steel reinforcement (this is an on-going experiment, hereby reported are the details of experimental set-up). Subject chloride-induced corrosionconcrete covercrack widthcrack frequencydurabilityreinforced concrete To reference this document use: http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:9343f4d9-83b7-4a64-a3c6-b278d5ceb908 Publisher University College London Source Young Researchers’ Forum II: Construction Materials, London, UK, 19th February 2014 Part of collection Institutional Repository Document type conference paper Rights (c) 2014 The Author(s) Files PDF 315516.pdf 282.83 KB Close viewer /islandora/object/uuid:9343f4d9-83b7-4a64-a3c6-b278d5ceb908/datastream/OBJ/view