Service Life of Reinforced Concrete Structures in Coastal Environments

International Concrete Abstracts Portal

The International Concrete Abstracts Portal is an ACI led collaboration with leading technical organizations from within the international concrete industry and offers the most comprehensive collection of published concrete abstracts.

  


Title: Service Life of Reinforced Concrete Structures in Coastal Environments

Author(s): Ceki Halmen, David Trejo, Momn Telfah

Publication: Symposium Paper

Volume: 366

Issue:

Appears on pages(s): 141-155

Keywords: Corrosion, service life, marine environment, probabilistic, allowable chlorides, exposure conditions

DOI: 10.14359/51749239

Date: 10/1/2025

Abstract:
Corrosion of reinforcement is a common deterioration problem for reinforced concrete structures at coastal areas causing early failure, increased maintenance costs, and significant safety problems. This paper combines a wellestablished diffusion-based service life estimation method with recently developed data-driven models on surface chloride concentration accumulation and critical chloride threshold distribution data to probabilistically analyze the effect of design parameters such as water-cement ratio (w/c), cover depth, and admixed chloride content in various coastal exposure zones. Results indicate that the used probabilistic analysis can result in changes to estimated service life values by an order of magnitude. Although w/c and cover depth were the most significant factors affecting the service life, parameters such as wind speed, temperature, exposure zone, and distance from the coast were identified as influencing the service life of coastal structures.

Related References:

1. Elsener, B., Macrocell corrosion of steel in concrete - implications for corrosion monitoring. Cement and Concrete Composites, 2002. 24(1): p. 65-72.

2. Broomfield, J.P., Corrosion of Steel in Concrete: Understanding, Investigation, and Repair 2006, London and New York: Spon Press.

3. Carvajal, A., R. Vera, F. Corvo, and A. Castañeda, Diagnosis and rehabilitation of real reinforced concrete structures in coastal areas. Corrosion engineering, science and technology, 2012. 47(1): p. 70-77.

4. Montemor, M., A. Simoes, and M. Ferreira, Chloride-induced corrosion on reinforcing steel: from the fundamentals to the monitoring techniques. Cement and concrete composites, 2003. 25(4-5): p. 491-502.

5. Pech-Canul, M.A. and P. Castro, Corrosion measurements of steel reinforcement in concrete exposed to a tropical marine atmosphere. Cement and Concrete Research, 2002. 32(3): p. 491-498.

6. Marquez, L.E., In South Florida and coastal areas worldwide, corrosion is a cry for help. Materials Performance Magazine, 2022(April 2022).

7. Tepl, yacute, Bretislav, Vorechovsk, aacute, and Dita, Reinforcement Corrosion: Limit States, Reliability and Modelling. Journal of Advanced Concrete Technology, 2012. 10(11): p. 353-362.

8. Munoz, A., C. Andrade, and A. Torres, Corrosion products pressure needed to crack the concrete cover. Advances in Construction Materials 2007, 2007: p. 359-370.

9. Liu, T. and R. Weyers, Modeling the dynamic corrosion process in chloride contaminated concrete structures. Cement and Concrete research, 1998. 28(3): p. 365-379.

10. Yang, S., X. Xi, K. Li, and C.-Q. Li, Numerical modeling of nonuniform corrosion-induced concrete crack width. Journal of Structural Engineering, 2018. 144(8): p. 04018120.

11. Collepardi, M., A. Marcialis, and R. Turriziani, Penetration of chloride ions into cement pastes and concretes. Journal of the American Ceramic Society, 1972. 55(10): p. 534-535.

12. Chen, R., J. Liu, and S. Mu, Chloride ion penetration resistance and microstructural modification of concrete with the addition of calcium stearate. Construction and Building Materials, 2022. 321: p. 126188.

13. Angst, U., B. Elsener, C.K. Larsen, and Ø. Vennesland, Critical chloride content in reinforced concrete —A review. Cement and Concrete Research, 2009. 39(12): p. 1122-1138.

14. Trejo, D., N.P. Vaddey, and C. Halmen, Standardizing test to quantify chloride threshold of steel in concrete. ACI Materials Journal, 2021. 118(1): p. 177-187.

15. Adil, G., C. Halmen, P. Vaddey, J. Pacheco, and D. Trejo, Multi-Laboratory Validation Study of Critical Chloride Threshold Test Method. ACI Materials Journal, 2022. 119(6).

16. Isgor, B., C. Halmen, D. Trejo, and D. Tepke. Recent Initiatives of ACI Committee 222 on Corrosion of Metals in Concrete. Presented at RILEM Spring Convention and Conference. Springer. 2024

17. Ahmed, A.A. and D. Trejo, Quantifying Conservativeness of Water-Soluble Chloride Testing. ACI Materials Journal, 2023. 120(2): p. 13-24.

18. Vaddey, N.P., M. Shakouri, and D. Trejo, Predicting chloride testing outcome of different cementitious systems. ACI Materials Journal, 2020. 117(1): p. 139-151.

19. David, T. and V. Gokul Dev, Chlorides in Concrete: Science-Based Exposure Classifications and Allowable Limits. ACI Materials Journal, 2024. 121(1).

20. Angst, U.M. and R. Polder, Spatial variability of chloride in concrete within homogeneously exposed areas. Cement and Concrete Research, 2014. 56(Supplement C): p. 40-51.

21. Soive, A. and V. Baroghel-Bouny, Influence of gravel distribution on the variability of chloride penetration front in saturated uncracked concrete. Construction and Building Materials, 2012. 34: p. 63-69.

22. Shakouri, M., D. Trejo, and P. Gardoni. A risk-based model for determining allowable admixed chloride limits in concrete. Presented at International RILEM Conference on Materials, Systems and Structures in Civil Engineering: Conference segment on service life of cement-based materials and structures. Lyngby Denmark. 2016

23. Shakouri, M., Time-dependent concentration of chlorides at the concrete surface revisited. Sustainable and Resilient Infrastructure, 2021. 8: p. 1-18.

24. Ann, K.Y., J.H. Ahn, and J.S. Ryou, The importance of chloride content at the concrete surface in assessing the time to corrosion of steel in concrete structures. Construction and Building Materials, 2009. 23(1): p. 239-245.

25. Guo, Z., R. Guo, and S. Lin, Multi-factor fuzzy prediction model of concrete surface chloride concentration with trained samples expanded by random forest algorithm. Marine Structures, 2022. 86: p. 103311.

26. Liu, J., K. Tang, D. Pan, Z. Lei, W. Wang, and F. Xing, Surface Chloride Concentration of Concrete under Shallow Immersion Conditions. Materials (Basel), 2014. 7(9): p. 6620-6631.

27. Yang, L., L. Wang, and B. Yu, Time-varying behavior and its coupling effects with environmental conditions and cementitious material types on surface chloride concentration of marine concrete. Construction and Building Materials, 2021. 303: p. 124578.

28. Zhao, R., C. Li, and X. Guan, Advances in Modeling Surface Chloride Concentrations in Concrete Serving in the Marine Environment: A Mini Review. Buildings, 2024. 14(6): p. 1879.

29. Ehlen, M.A. and A.N. Kojundic, Life-365™ v2. 2. Concrete international, 2014. 36(5): p. 41-44.

30. Sakr, M.R., O. El-Mahdy, and K. El-Dash, Effect of Different Factors on the Service Life of Concrete Structures in Chloride Environments: A Parametric Study–Part One. International Journal of Advanced Engineering Research and Science, 2016. 3(8): p. 40-48.

31. Park, J.-I., K.-M. Lee, S.-O. Kwon, S.-H. Bae, S.-H. Jung, and S.-W. Yoo, Diffusion decay coefficient for chloride ions of concrete containing mineral admixtures. Advances in Materials Science and Engineering, 2016. 2016(1): p. 11.

32. Yuan, Y. and J. Jiang, Prediction of temperature response in concrete in a natural climate environment. Construction and Building Materials, 2011. 25(8): p. 3159-3167.