Corrosion monitoring of steel in concrete by galvanostatic pulse technique

Various non-destructive quantitative techniques based on electrochemical methods for measuring the corrosion rate of steel embedded in concrete have been used. The most important is the linear polarization method. In practice, this method gives lower corrosion rates of steel in concrete due to inclusion of the resistance of the concrete in the measurement. In order to eliminate the resistance of the concrete, a galvanostatic pulse method is used. In this method the current pulse is applied to the steel in concrete and the polarizing potential is sampled after the switching off the pulse. The performance of the galvanostatic pulse technique for monitoring the corrosion of steel in concrete has been assessed by comparing the corrosion rate values obtained by the weight loss method and linear polarization resistance method for steel reinforced in M15, M20, M30 and M35 grade concrete containing 0–5% NaCl. It is found that the galvanostatic pulse technique is able to give reliable corrosion rate values of steel in concrete.