State-of-the-art on performance evolution and control of concrete structures subjected to environmental actions

The state-of-the-art on performance evolution and control of concrete structures subjected to environmental actions was reviewed and analyzed. It was found that after over 20 years' research, the basic theoretical issues including the ingress mechanisms of environmental media, mechanical behavior of corroded reinforced concrete structural members and time-dependent reliabilities of structures have been extensively studied; the monitoring and inspection techniques for the corrosion of steel bars and the electrochemical rehabilitation and self-healing techniques for concrete structures have been developed; the basic concept for the life-cycle design and maintenance of concrete structures has been proposed. However, it was suggested that for the future development of life-cycle design and maintenance theories of concrete structures, the research methodology should be shifted to indeterminate problems from determinate problems, and the research objectives should be focused on the time-dependent issues, with due focuses on the varying properties of time-dependent and space-dependent environmental actions and the heterogeneous properties of materials in the meso-scale. © 2019, Editorial Office of Journal of Building Structures. All right reserved.