A Corrosion Model for Prediction of the Service Life of Reinforced Concrete Water Conveyancing Structures
Date
2020Author
Mogire, Philip
Abuodha, Silvester
Mwero, John
Mang’uriu, Geoffrey
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
With increased competing demands of sustainable and green structures to support the United
Nations sustainable development goals, new technologies are evolving for efficient design and manufacture
and construction of civil and environmental engineering products. Researchers have up scaled their effort to
develop techniques to monitor the performance of civil engineering structures within their service life for
optimum return from investment. The aim of this research was to develop a corrosion model for prediction of
the service life of reinforced concrete water conveyancing structures. To achieve the desired objective, steel
samples were cast in 9 cylinders each of 150mm diameter x 300mm long, 130mm diameter x 300mm long
and 100mm diameter x 300mm long in concrete of characteristic strength 25/mm2,30N/mm2 and 35N/mm2
respectively. After 24 hours the cast specimens were demolded and immersed in curing tanks for 28 days and
then immersed in a 3.5% industrial sodium chloride solution under 6V. The accelerated corrosion specimens
were monitored for onset of cracks and stopped when the cracks were 0.2mm in width. The physical and
chemical properties of the materials were investigated for compliance with relevant and applicable British and
Kenyan standards for conformity to acceptable criteria. The concrete materials were batched by weight and
mixed by a lab electric pan concrete mixer in batches of 0.009 m3. The concrete batches were tested for
consistency by the slump and compaction factor tests. The applicability of existing models for critical
corrosion depth for cover cracking was assessed. The corrosion current density of existing models was
evaluated using results of this work and a model was proposed that matched with the experimental data
reasonably well. Further, a corrosion service life prediction model that takes account of the cover to the rebar,
the compressive strength and split tensile properties of concrete has proposed. The service life model
developed here is for reinforced concrete water conveyancing structures subjected to chloride contamination.
The model defines a criterion for corrosion initiation period, crack propagation period to 0.05mm width and
propagation period from 0.05mm to 0.2mm. The results of the analysis of the present model significantly
correlate well with experimental work and results of other researchers.
