Cost-effective design of reinforced concrete with use of self-terminated carbonation model

Warsaw University of Technology, Department of Building Materials Engineering, al. Armii Ludowej 16, Warsaw 00-637, Poland

^* Corresponding author: p.woyciechowski@il.pw.edu.pl

Abstract

According to Eurocodes EC0 and EC2 designing of concrete structure durable in terms of carbonation is assured by selection of suitable thickness of reinforcement concrete cover. The selection is done on the basis of structure category and concrete strength class, regardless of the concrete material composition or technological type, thus selected value is an estimation, often exaggerated. The paper presents elaborated “self-terminated carbonation model” that includes abovementioned factors and enables to indicate the maximal possible depth of carbonation. The model, in contrast to parabolic models published in the literature, is a hyperbolic function of carbonation depth in time. The paper explains why such model describes the phenomenon of carbonation better than others. The paper contains an example of calculation of the cover thickness using that model.