Minimising the risk of chloride induced corrosion by selection of concreting materials.

Despite considerable research efforts, corrosion of reinforcement in chloride contaminated environments still presents a significant worldwide problem. One reason for this may be belief that durability of concrete can be defined simply by a single property or performance characteristic such as sorptivity or permeability. Codes of practice often define durability by strength grade or water/cement ratio with the inherent assumption that stronger concrete will have a higher resistance to the environment. By considering the mechanism of chloride ingress and the subsequent corrosion process this paper proposes an optimised mix for chloride contaminated environments. This is supported by the results of both laboratory tests to measure a range of transport properties of concrete and field trials which have been running for 2 years. (A)