Abstract
It is a well-known fact that reinforced concrete structures exposed to marine environments suffer from reinforcement corrosion due to chloride ingress, which degrades the performance of the structure. To address this issue, reinforced concrete structures are designed and constructed to have a service life of more than 100 years, but to ensure safety or durability, it is necessary to accurately predict the onset of reinforcement corrosion. Various prediction models have been developed for chloride transport in concrete, including physically based models, with Fick's 2nd law being the most commonly used empirically based model for chloride penetration in concrete. However, the results presented by these deterministic methods have obvious limitations in considering concrete with inhomogeneous material properties and different exposure environments. These limitations can be addressed by probabilistic methods, but their applicability is still challenging. In this study, a simplified probabilistic method is used to predict the onset of reinforcement corrosion in concrete exposed to the marine environment. The main probability distributions of diffusion coefficient, cover thickness, and surface chloride amount, which are the main coefficients of Fick's 2nd law, are presented to predict the time of rebar corrosion initiation, and the probability of rebar corrosion.
Keywords
concrete, chloride, Fick’s 2nd law, probabilistic method.
DOI
10.5703/1288284318156
Recommended Citation
Kim, Jaehwan; Park, Sangki; Seo, Dong-Woo; Park, Ki-Tae; and Kim, JooHyung, "Simple Probabilistic Method for Chloride Transport in Concrete" (2025). International Conference on Durability of Concrete Structures. 3.
https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/icdcs/2025/tmc/3
Simple Probabilistic Method for Chloride Transport in Concrete
It is a well-known fact that reinforced concrete structures exposed to marine environments suffer from reinforcement corrosion due to chloride ingress, which degrades the performance of the structure. To address this issue, reinforced concrete structures are designed and constructed to have a service life of more than 100 years, but to ensure safety or durability, it is necessary to accurately predict the onset of reinforcement corrosion. Various prediction models have been developed for chloride transport in concrete, including physically based models, with Fick's 2nd law being the most commonly used empirically based model for chloride penetration in concrete. However, the results presented by these deterministic methods have obvious limitations in considering concrete with inhomogeneous material properties and different exposure environments. These limitations can be addressed by probabilistic methods, but their applicability is still challenging. In this study, a simplified probabilistic method is used to predict the onset of reinforcement corrosion in concrete exposed to the marine environment. The main probability distributions of diffusion coefficient, cover thickness, and surface chloride amount, which are the main coefficients of Fick's 2nd law, are presented to predict the time of rebar corrosion initiation, and the probability of rebar corrosion.
