Title: Cathodic Protection of Concrete, Prefabricated Floor Elements.

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Publication: CIA

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Date: 2/13/2011

Abstract:
Cathodic protection is a technique for protecting metal against corrosion that dates back as far as the early part of the nineteenth century. This technique is applied large scale, particularly on steel structures in seawater, on buried pipeline systems and storage tanks and on ships. Since the early seventies, the use of this technique has also been ’discovered’ for the benefit of reinforcing steel in concrete structures. The so-called concrete cover protects the steel reinforcement in concrete structures, primarily. This envelops the reinforcement and creates a protective (alkaline) environment in which the (passivated) steel, as a rule, won’t corrode. However, because of external effects (for example, carbonation and the ingress of chlorides) and/or because of flaws during production (for example, a concrete cover of substandard quality and/or size, the mixing-in of chlorides), this primary protection may, in the end, turn out to be unsatisfactory. The reinforcement is no longer protected and may, if water and oxygen are present in sufficient amounts, begin to corrode. In several cases whereby the primary corrosion protection is found to be wanting, cathodic protection offers an alternative for providing additional protection. In this paper, the basic principles of cathodic protection will be discussed, after which a possible application will be considered for prefabricated concrete floor elements with mixed in chlorides.