Corrosion diagnosis of reinforced concrete beams after 40 years exposure in marine environment by non destructive tools

ABSTRACT This paper describes the detailed experimental program of the French national project “benchmark des poutres de la Rance”. It presents a corrosion diagnosis of prestressed beams after 40 years exposure in natural marine environment. It includes results from non destructive testing tools, complementary laboratory tests and destructive analyses. This project will provide a large database on the corrosion state of reinforced concrete beams after 40 years exposure in a marine environment (mechanical, electrochemical and physico-chemical properties) and will allow studying the sensitivity of NDT tools to evaluate corrosion risk within reinforced concrete structures. These results will be given to the modellers in order to complete their test conditions in the framework of the validation of mechanical models.