Probabilistic service life prediction of cracked concrete using numerical and engineering models

Chloride ingress induced depassivation of reinforcing steel leading to corrosion is a major durability concern for concrete structures. The influence of the presence of cracks commonly occurring in concrete structures on chloride ingress should be accounted to improve the accuracy of service life predictions. This study investigates the depassivation probability of the reinforcement in both cracked and uncracked concrete using both analytical and 1D numerical models. The probabilistic service life prediction is realized using the Monte Carlo simulation to incorporate the uncertainty and variability in the input variables. For uncracked concrete the result of the numerical model agreed well with the fib chloride model. For cracked concrete, the numerical simulation suggests that the optimal engineering approach to account for cracks in a service life analysis is the adaptation of crack depth. Although, the approach could lead to an overestimation of chloride concentration because the 1D numerical simulation did not consider lateral diffusion in cracked concrete.