Investigation of the steel rebar corrosion using embeddable solid state reference electrode in marine environments

Abstract

Reinforced concrete (RC) structures play a significant role in the construction industries. An embeddable solid-state reference electrode (ESSRE) was used to evaluate the corrosion status of steel rebar in the concrete of various cover thicknesses that exposed to the maritime environment (3.5 % NaCl) in this study. From the open circuit potential measurement (OCP), the passive state, the corrosion uncertainty, and the 90% probability of corrosion state of the steel rebars in the concrete were monitored by ESSRE. From the electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) method, severe corrosion was observed at the exposure period of 1510, 1847, 2350, and 3020 h for C10, C15, C20, and C30 concrete, respectively. The results confirm that the ESSRE can be useful to identify the corrosion occurrence and severe corrosion of steel rebar embedded in different cover depth concrete structures.