Corrosion monitoring for marine concrete based on a first-order RC model

Due to the unique features such as high humidity and high salinity within marine environments, marine concrete corrosion is a severe problem and efficient monitoring methods are needed. However, commonly used methods, such as break examination, requires destructive testing of the structure and are not able to monitor corrosion online. In this paper, we present a new corrosion monitoring method for marine concrete based on a first-order RC model, and verify it in real marine environment. In this method, the marine concrete is modeled as a first-order RC circuit where the capacitance of the model is directly related to the concentration of chloride ions in the concrete. This method ensures convenience and low cost as well as online long-term monitoring without damage to the concrete or offline signal delay. Experimental results show that this method is able to monitor the corrosion under various marine situations and tell the quantitative difference.