Corrosion detection in reinforced concrete structures using static and dynamic response measurements

Corrosion of steel bars in reinforced concrete structures is the main cause of structural degradation; the detection of the early propagation stage of reinforcement corrosion is therefore a crucial aspect in structural health monitoring applications. The paper reports about the assessment of corrosion of the reinforcements through the observation of the dynamic and static structural responses. A reinforced concrete beam modelled by plane stress finite elements will be used as a benchmark. The capacity of simulating corrosion damages and structural behaviours will be discussed in function of the detection of the early propagation of reinforcement corrosion. For damage identification, different techniques will be used. For the dynamic measurements, Single Value Decomposition and Wavelet Packet Decomposition will be applied and compared. The static measurements will be analysed with the Proper Orthogonal Decomposition. The results from the benchmark will be compared with experimental studies in the laboratory on damaged concrete beams.