Best practice in the management and protection of concrete assets

摘要

While reinforced concrete construction has boomed over the past 70 years, forensic analysis of failures shows thatmany structures have not achieved the design service life due to poor durability. This can primarily be attributed toa lack of understanding about durability design, poor construction practices and poor life-cycle maintenance,resulting in unexpected deterioration and damage that requires intervention. Exposure to chloride ions continues topresent the construction industry with the greatest challenges. In Europe, EN 206 sets durability performance criteriafor reinforced concrete under normal exposure environments, supplemented by national recommendations.Increasingly, infrastructure is being built either in environments that are so hostile to reinforced concrete or withservice design lives that are so long, that they are outside the scope of European standards. For design in hostileenvironments, both within Europe and around the world, performance-related durability methods have beenadopted, using predictive ingress models over extended service lives. However, even then, the fundamental riskremains as to whether what the designer intended, through the various cement and cover combinations, will beachieved in practice by the contractor’s workforce and site practices. This paper explores the lessons from durabilityfailures of reinforced concrete and examines how performance can be modelled and enhanced in extremeenvironments and assured by effective corrosion monitoring and management strategies.