Galvanic Corrosion of Steel in Contact with Carbon-Polymer Composites. II: Experiments in Concrete

Studies were conducted to understand the galvanic interactions between CFRP and steel in chloride-contaminated concrete. CFRP-pultruded rod samples (6 mm in diameter), #3 deformed plain rebar (PR, uncoated), and #4 epoxy-coated reinforcing (ECR) steel bars were tested. After 350 days, potential measurements of CFRP and steel samples in chloride-contaminated concrete were ?200 and ?600 mV (versus CSE), respectively. These results confirm that chloride contamination in concrete could allow galvanic corrosion between CFRP and steel. The measured galvanic current densities were up to 0.7 and 100 μA/m2 for the CFRP-PR and CFRP-ECR couples, respectively, raising concerns about the degradation of both CFRP and steel. The results showed that PR steel was unaffected, as the corrosion rates estimated before and after the coupling with CFRP were similar. In contrast, coupling CFRP and ECR steel showed an increase of 10 times of the estimated corrosion rate, suggesting that galvanic interaction might affect the ECR steel.