Corrosion Rate Measurement of Steel in Concrete

Despite the need of reliable information on the corrosion rate of reinforced concrete structures with chloride induced localized corrosion, the measurements on site and their interpretation are still debated controversially. The consequence is that, despite commercial instrumentation for corrosion rate measurements being available, their use in civil engineering practice is limited. This paper shows that at least two parameters of interest, the corrosion potential and the concrete resistivity, can be determined reliably. The determination of the polarization resistance Rp is questioned due to the non-uniform current distribution between small counter-electrode and reinforcement and the unknow size of the locally corroding anode. The new perspectives on measuring the corrosion rate of localized corrosion by quantitative evaluation of galvanostatic pulse measurements are discussed.