Modeling the Amount of Steel Corrosion at the Cracking of Concrete Cover

This article tries to contribute to quantify the amount of steel corrosion at the cracking of concrete cover. The amount of steel corrosion when the concrete cover cracks, is a key factor in the life of concrete structures. During the time between steel depassivation and concrete cover cracking, the process of steel corrosion develops in three stages: free expansion of the corrosion products, stress initiation of the concrete cover, and cracking of the concrete cover. A concrete cracking model is presented here to estimate the total amount of steel corrosion at the onset of the cracking of the concrete cover. This model is applied to some test results reported by other researchers. The amount of steel corrosion predicted by the proposed model when cracking of the concrete cover occurs is in agreement with the experimentally observed results.