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Spacer is a construction material for maintaining cover depth and steel installation, however several problems like staining, leakage, and cracking are currently issued due to performance degradation and unsatisfactory dimensional stability of spacer. Plastic composite is widely used for prevention of brittle failure in cement based material, which yields improvement of crack resistance and ductile failure. This study is for development and applicability evaluation of high strength spacer with slag cement for environmental load reduction and plastic composite like polypropylene fiber, nylon fiber, and glass fiber. For this work, unit weight of 4 different plastic fibers are evaluated through preliminary tests. Physical tests including compressive, flexural, and tensile strength and durability tests including absorption, permeability, length change, crack resistance, carbonation, and freezing and thawing are performed. Through various tests, optimum plastic fiber is selected and manufacturing system for high strength spacer with the selected fiber is developed. Dimensional stability of the developed spacer is evaluated through field applicability evaluation.

Steel reinforcement buried in concrete structure in submerged zone does not easily become corroded due to lack of dissolved oxygen. For that reason, accelerated corrosion test in submerged state is performed with an electrochemical method, which is not suitable for actual corrosion mechanism and makes it difficult to find relevance with long-term behavior. In this study, accelerated corrosion test was performed with the temperature and chloride concentration as main variables in order to establish a method for accelerated corrosion test in submerged zone. Corrosion was determined by the result of reinforcement corrosion monitoring based on galvanic potential measurement and half-cell potential method. The accelerated corrosion test result showed that temperature had the most dominant influence. To determine the chloride content, chloride concentration by depth in the test sample was measured. With the same conditions, chloride penetration interpretation was performed by DuCOM, a FEM durability interpretation program. Also, a test was performed to measure dissolved oxygen according to soaking conditions of artificial seawater, which was used for verifying the validity of the accelerated corrosion test result.

Concrete sewage culvert shows degradation with time since it is always exposed to various harmful ions, and deterioration of concrete culvert propagates to structural safety problems. After reclamation, maintenance for concrete sewage culvert is very difficult so that high durable and structural performance are essential for the sewage concrete culvert. Recently polymer concrete has been used to improve mechanical properties and durability performance. In this paper, engineering properties are evaluated for sewage culvert made with polymer concrete, and leakage and adhesive strength between joints are evaluated with small-scale models. The polymer sewage culvert shows high compressive strength over 100MPa with low water permeability and chloride penetration. Furthermore, high resistances to chemical and biological attack are evaluated. Through tests for leakage and adhesive, unification of joints is verified with evaluation of no leakage and high adhesive strength. Precast polymer sewage culvert in this paper can be actively used for severe conditions like sewage lines.

When RC (Reinforced Concrete) structures are exposed to sea water, steel corrosion can occur and this leads a degradation of structural performance. Referring the electro-deposition system with sea water from the 1st step research, durability and structural performance are evaluated in coated steel and RC members containing it in the 2nd research. In the durability performance test, Half Cell Potential test is performed and the coated steel is evaluated to have the high resistance to corrosion, which shows only 35% of corrosion velocity in normal (bare) steel. In the structural performance test, tensile strength, adhesive strength, and flexural/shear in RC member are performed. For the electro-deposit coated steel, increasing ratios of 3.2% and 8.8% are evaluated in the test of tensile strength and adhesive strength, respectively. For the structural test in RC member, there is no big difference between RC members with coated and non-coated steel in ultimate load and failure pattern It is evaluated that the chemical compound with and from electro-deposition causes slightly increased structural performance. The electro-deposit coated steel can be more widely applied after performance verification from several tests like fatigue, resistance to impact, and long term-submerging test.

This study is for developing a system for electro-deposition utilizing sea water containing various ions like calcium and magnesium. This is the first step research for the final goal which is a development of anti-corrosive steel for RC structure, so that this paper is mainly focused on the development for electro-deposition system. Optimum conditions for steel coating is obtained through various tests considering anode type, temperature, duration time, and current density. The composition of electro-deposition is analyzed through SEM, EDS, and XRD and it is evaluated to be and . Through measuring polarization potential and current density in the coated steel, the coating layer from the developed system is evaluated to have high resistance to steel corrosion. Additional tests and discussions on durability and structural performance in the coated steel from this work will be performed for the second step research.

Steel corrosion in concrete is a main cause of deterioration and early failure of concrete structures. A novel integration of electromagnetic heat induction and infrared (IR) thermography is proposed for nondestructive detection of steel corrosion in concrete, by taking advantage of the difference in thermal characteristics of corroded and non-corroded steel. This paper focuses on experimental investigation of the concept. An inductive heater is developed to remotely heat the embedded steel from concrete surface, which is integrated with an IR camera. Concrete samples with different cover depths are prepared. Each sample is embedded with a single rebar in the middle, resulting an identical cover depth from the front and the back surfaces, which enable heat induction from one surface and IR imaging from the other simultaneously. The impressed current (IC) method is adopted to induce accelerated corrosion on the rebar. IR video images are recorded during the entire heating and cooling periods. The test results demonstrate a clear difference in thermal characteristics between corroded and non-corroded samples. The corroded sample shows higher rates of heating and cooling than those of the non-corroded sample. This study demonstrates a potential for nondestructive detection of rebar corrosion in concrete.