Monitoring DIAMOND device for corrosion state evaluation of reinforced concrete structures

The corrosion of steel rebars is a major issue with respect to the durability of reinforced concrete structure. Several corrosion evaluation methods exist: half-cell potential, concrete resistivity or linear polarization resistance (LPR) measurement. However, these techniques are employed at a given moment and are not suitable for continuous corrosion evaluation. This works belongs to the DIAMOND project which aims to produce a new corrosion state measurement monitoring device. The monitoring probe consists on a cylindrical probe. A ring shape counter-electrode CE is plated on the probe side. At the centre of the CE, a reference electrode (RE) is placed for potential measurement. The device is embedded in concrete at 25 mm of the inspected rebar. The instantaneous ohmic drop observed at the beginning of the polarization measurement is only linked with the concrete resistance which depends on concrete cover and resistivity. A numerical model was developed on Comsol® to create abacuses graph that link concrete resistivity and concrete resistance. Thus, the ohmic drop measure at the beginning of the polarization can now be used to determine regularly concrete average resistivity between the monitoring probe and steel rebar. Two other series of abacus graphs are then introduced in order to determine the polarization resistance of the rebar in front of the monitoring probe (the point of interest (PI)). Two monitoring probes were placed in two types of concrete (one sound concrete and one concrete with chloride). Corrosion potential, concrete resistivity and rebar corrosion rate were monitored over around 200 days. The experimental results obtained with the monitoring probe are finally compared to the results obtained with the surface DIAMOND probe (introduced in the ICCRRR 2018 paper “Alternative methodology for linear polarization resistance assessment of reinforced concrete structure [1]”).