Concrete composition and service life of reinforced concrete structures exposed to chloride bearing environments

Steel corrosion has become a critical issue in the management of reinforced concrete structures. The high costs related to maintenance and repair of corrosion-damaged structures have led to the awareness that steel corrosion has to be prevented since the design stage in order to reduce the life cycle cost of structures. Therefore, there is a need for tools aimed at the design of durable structures. Performance-based methods based on probabilistic or semiprobabilistic approaches have been recently proposed for this purpose, but there is lack of information about the parameters related to the long term behaviour of the materials. Preliminary results of a long-term experimental program aimed at the collection of parameters describing the behaviour of a wide range of concrete compositions and exposure conditions are presented in this paper. The role of concrete composition in relation to the service life of structures exposed to chlorides will be discussed.