Modeling Steel Corrosion in Concrete Structures - Part 2: A Unified Adaptive Finite Element Model for Simulation of Steel Corrosion

Abstract

Recently, numerical methods that can reliably predict the service life of reinforced concrete structures have attracted increasing attention. In this, the second of two companion papers, relevant literature on numerical modeling of steel corrosion is first reviewed. Then, a unified and straight-forward algorithm that is capable of performing different types of steel corrosion modeling using a single scheme is presented, based on the new inverse relation relating the current density with potential for the cathodic reaction proposed in the companion paper. Besides being significantly more efficient computationally arising from the selective mesh refinement feature of adaptive finite element modeling, the proposed algorithm can also efficiently model complex geometries and incorporate parameters that vary over the domain.