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Silica fume has long been used as a mineral admixture to improve the durability and produce high strength and high performance concrete. And in marine and coastal environments, penetration of chloride ions is one of the main mechanisms causing concrete reinforcement corrosion. In this paper, we proposed a numerical procedure to predict the chloride diffusion in a hydrating silica fume blended concrete. This numerical procedure includes two parts: a hydration model and a chloride diffusion model. The hydration model starts with mix proportions of silica fume blended concrete and considers Portland cement hydration and silica fume reaction respectively. By using the hydration model, the evolution of properties of silica fume blended concrete is predicted as a function of curing age and these properties are adopted as input parameters for the chloride penetration model. Furthermore, based on the modeling of physicochemical processes of diffusion of chloride ion into concrete, the chloride distribution in silica fume blended concrete is evaluated. The prediction results agree well with experiment results of chloride ion concentrations in the hydrating concrete incorporating silica fume. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The corrosion of RC structures demonstrates very complicated forms of deterioration intermingled together but all pointing to a decrease in the durability of RC structures due to the corrosion of reinforcing bars. Until now, nondestructive techniques, such as half-cell potential and polarization resistance, have been widely available in the world. The former provides information on the probability of corrosion while the latter is associated with information concerning corrosion rates. Inversion by the boundary element method (IBEM) was developed for considering concrete resistivity. The applicability of the procedure was examined through a numerical analysis and electrolytic tests for RC slabs. A distribution in such concrete resistivity is relatively inhomogeneous including cracks on the surface of slabs. Regarding cracks in concrete, the relative coefficient of concrete resistance was introduced to perform its analysis. Further, the procedure will be developed to identify the corroded region visually using 3-D VRML. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Corrosion of Reinforcement (rebar) is nondestructively estimated by the half-cell potential measurement. As is the case with other nondestructive testings (NDT), understanding of the underlying principles should be clarified in order to obtain meaningful results. Therefore, the measurement of potentials in concrete is analytically investigated. The effect of internal defects on the potentials measured is clarified numerically by the boundary element method (BEM). Thus, a simplified inversion by BEM is applied to convert the potentials on concrete surface to those on rebars, taking into account the concrete resistivity. Because the potentials measured on concrete surface are so sensitive to moisture content, concrete resistivity and surface condition, an inverse procedure to convert the potentials on concrete surface into those on rebars is developed on the basis of BEM. It is found that ASTM criterion is practically applicable to estimate corrosion from the potential values converted. In experiments, an applicability of the procedure is examined by accelerated corrosion tests of reinforced concrete (RC) slabs. For practical use, the procedure is developed where results of IBEM are visualized by VRML (Virtual Reality modeling Language) in three-dimensional space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]