Corrosion Analysis on Reinforcing Steel in Concrete Using the Eddy Current Method

Corrosion of steel in concrete structures has a detrimental impact on the concrete's durability performance and often becomes a primary cause of failure and early damage in reinforced concrete constructions, with global corrosion costs estimated at US$2.5 trillion. Monitoring and assessment are crucial to determine the health and integrity of reinforced concrete structures. One effective strategy is to employ non-destructive testing (NDT). The purpose of this paper is to present an experimental study on the use of eddy current testing (ECT) to analyze the corrosion process in steel bars used in reinforced concrete structures. This paper involves a corrosion evaluation method by producing reinforced concrete and accelerating corrosion on field-reinforced bars and supports. Subsequently, corroded reinforced concrete specimen testing is conducted using eddy current testing (ECT) equipment to analyze corrosion. In the conclusion of this study, it can be observed that there are no changes in the impedance signal translated to the eddy current equipment when there are no defects/corrosion, while changes in impedance signals occur when the probe encounters defects/corrosion in the reinforcing steel bars. The higher the level of damage in the specimen, the higher the indication signal height due to changes in impedance and the influence of the corrosion percentage on the impedance signal in the eddy current testing (ECT) equipment. Additionally, the influence of the corrosion percentage on the impedance signal in the eddy current testing (ECT) device indicates that the number of detected defects increases with the increase in the corrosion percentage.