Concrete bridge corrosion protection with embedded galvanic anodes

Galvanic anodes have been included in patch repairs of steel reinforced concrete structural elements suffering from corrosion since the mid-nineties. Drilled Galvanic anodes are used in many concrete structures where corrosion potentials are high and/or chloride level is high but corrosion does not progress to the extent causing concrete damages. These two types of anodes has been included in the recently published ACT RAP Bulletin 8 'Installation of Embedded Galvanic Anodes' (ACT 2010). A newly developed distributed anode system (DAS) was tried to address the global corrosion issues in a bridge deck in 2003. The trial had been monitored for 10 years and was considered a great success. This paper presents the background of galvanic corrosion protection for reinforced concrete, introduces different levels of corrosion protection, the various galvanic anode systems used in concrete structures and the DAS anode monitored performance.