Influence of nano-silica addition on durability of UHPC

This study aims at studying the effect of nano-silica (nS) addition to ultra-high performance concrete (UHPC) on the corrosion resistance of steel bars embedded in the latter. In order to conduct a comparative study, a high performance concrete (HPC) and an UHPC without nS were also considered in the experimental program. An accelerated corrosion test along with multi-steps potentiodynamic polarization technique, including Tafel plot and linear polarization resistance (LPR), was used to determine the corrosion rate of the samples tested. The accelerated corrosion tests showed that the time to cracking in HPC is less than half the time in UHPC. It was found that nS addition to UHPC effectively reduces the corrosion rate of steel bars embedded in the latter.