13 / 2022-02-28 15:46:02

Numerical Evaluation of Space Averaging of Electric Field, Macro-cell Corrosion of Reinforcement and Anti-corrosion with Verification

Space averaging,Macro-cell corrosion,Anti-corrosion method,Numerical simulation,Experiment,Pseudo concrete material

Steel corrosion is one of the deterioration factors for reinforced concrete structures, where macro-cell corrosion type is detrimental due to the fast corroding speed associated with external circuit. The macro-cell corrosion is induced by the natural potential gap due to chloride penetration/carbonation or impressed electric field such as stray current, which may happen in different scales from kilometer to centimeter level. It requires us to capture the features of macro-cell corrosion with global viewpoint instead of only corroding spot, so that the effective anti-corrosion methods can be applied. This paper aims to validate a space-averaged electric filed simulation, where the whole surfaces of reinforcing bars are blended into the 3D extent of finite volume, for identifying the electric potential to drive the macro-cell corrosion of structural concrete. The overlaid scheme of electro-chemical analysis can not only tackle with the wide scale span, but also integrate with the smeared scheme of non-linear mechanics. Experiment is also conducted with transparent pseudo concrete materials, which has chemical pore-solutions similar to those of concrete, to validate the integrated simulation platform qualitatively. Satisfied agreement is found and the possible anti-corrosion methodologies are proposed.