Stochastic modeling of corrosion propagation for service life prediction of chloride contaminated RC structures

The intention of this paper is to present a reliability-based methodology for service life prediction of chloride contaminated RC structures. An improved time-variant probabilistic model of corrosion current density for representing the corrosion propagation in chloride contaminated RC structures is proposed. A corrosion model with the consideration of both uniform corrosion and pitting corrosion is also proposed. In the present study, for a corrosion-affected RC beam, it is assumed that the deterioration of structural strength is mainly due to the reduction in cross-sectional area of reinforcing bar. The fourth-moment method is applied to conduct time-dependent system reliability analysis. With the present strength deterioration model, the service life of chloride contaminated RC structures can be predicted using the present time-dependent system reliability assessment method.