Comparative studies of experimental and numerical techniques in measurement of corrosion rate and time-to-corrosion-initiation of rebar in concrete in marine environments

The evaluation of the corrosion process for estimating the service life of concrete structure is of great importance to civil engineers. In this paper, the effects of different exposure conditions (i.e., tidal and splash zones) on macrocell and microcell corrosion of rebar in concrete were examined on concrete specimens with different w/c ratios in the Persian Gulf region. Experimental techniques such as macrocell corrosion rate measurement, Galvanostatic pulse, electrical resistivity, half-cell potential measurement, and numerical techniques were used to determine the corrosion rate and time-to-corrosion-initiation of rebar. Results showed that corrosion rates in the splash zone were higher than the ones in the tidal zone. This indicates that the propagation of corrosion in the splash zone is faster than the one in the tidal zone. There was also a strong correlation between the experimental results and those obtained from a numerical model in both tidal and splash zones.