Chloride ingress data from field and laboratory exposure – Influence of salinity and temperature

Marine exposure conditions provide an aggressive environment for reinforced concrete structures, mainly due to the occurrence of chloride-induced reinforcement corrosion. There are several influencing factors, but despite a lot of research little is known about the influence from variations in the exposure conditions. Therefore an exposure programme has been made, where concrete specimens, made from one single concrete composition, have been exposed at 12 marine locations around the world, along with a parallel study under laboratory conditions. The specimens have been constantly submerged during the exposure to get well-defined exposure conditions. The purpose was to get a quantitative measure of how different exposure conditions influence the durability of reinforced concrete, measured in terms of chloride ingress into the concrete. The results indicate that the exposure conditions (salinity and temperature of seawater), as expected, influenced the chloride ingress. This is further analysed and discussed in the paper.