Corrosion of steel reinforcement in concrete is a degradation mechanism representing a major worldwide infrastructure challenge. Globally, €2.2 trillion (~3.4% of the global GDP) is spent each year to prevent, mitigate, and repair civil infrastructure damage due to corrosion of steel reinforcement. This societal impact presents an urgent need to understand and monitor corrosion phenomena to improve resiliency against in-service environments. Additionally, with the advent of global climate change challenges, the decarbonization of the built environment with durable low-carbon cementitious materials is imperative. The primary aim of the Passive layER FailuRe Mechanisms (PERFoRM) project is to understand how in-service environmental conditions (e.g. CO2 and/or chloride) influence the stability and failure (i.e. corrosion) of the passive layer on steel rebar embedded within concretes based on innovative low-carbon cementitious materials (i.e. near-neutral salt activated slag materials). Investigations on the passive layer formation, stability, and breakdown are lacking due to the short timescales of their formation as well as the pore solution chemistry dependence on their physical and electrochemical properties. Thus, the PERFoRM project takes one first step to understand the processes affecting the formation, development, and breakdown of the passive layer in order to engineer reinforced low-carbon cementitious materials with improved corrosion durability.
The key objectives of PERFoRM are:
1. Developing novel durability wireless embedded (D-WirE) sensors for in-situ monitoring of concretes
2. Ground-breaking monitoring of chemical and physical changes induced by carbonation/chloride penetration in NnSAS
3. Advanced characterisation of passive layer growth, breakdown, and failure rates of steel rebars embedded in NnSAS
4. Creation of service-life models by incorporation of in-situ carbonation and chloride penetration regression models
