Corrosion inhibitors for severe environments

The need to provide supplementary protection to structures exposed to severe environments is now well recognized by the construction industry. Several protective measures, such as use of blended cements, coated bars, stainless steel or stainless clad reinforcement, fiber reinforced plastic bars, surface coatings, corrosion inhibitors, etc., are being adopted from the time of construction itself. Migratory corrosion inhibitors are being utilized in the existing structures that have shown early signs of reinforcement corrosion. Laboratory and field studies have been conducted at the author's institution to assess the possibility of utilizing both generic and proprietary corrosion inhibitors in protecting reinforcement from corrosion. In this paper, the results obtained in the studies conducted so far are discussed. Also, a summary of the on-going studies is presented.