International Journal of Sustainable Building Technology and Urban Development ISSN:2093-761X(Print) 2093-7628(Online)

Reinforcement concrete is the construction material usually used in civil engineering. The uncertain impacts of the environment on his behaviour make it difficult to accurate assessment of the durability of structures with time. Aggressive agents such as chlorides are the most important buildings aggressive agents which may be exposed. They are responsible for one of the main mechanisms of degradation of existing structures. These phenomena are identified by the corrosion due to penetration of chlorides. The speed of reinforcement corrosion depends mainly on the chlorides penetration inside the cement matrix which is determined by the concrete porosity. In this paper, a probabilistic formulation is applied to reinforcement corrosion phenomenon and statistics regarding chloride penetration depth are investigated by performing a parametric analysis which integrates the influence of variation of the chloride ions migration coefficient and critical chloride ion content at the concrete surface. Monte Carlo simulations are realized under the assumption that the chloride ions migration coefficient and critical chloride ion content are random variables with a lognormal probability distribution. The results showed that the corrosion kinetic is affected by pore sizes; the depth of chloride ions penetration tends to increase when the porosity of concrete increases, and the variability of the chloride ions migration coefficient influences slightly the corrosion depth, whereas the critical chloride ions content controls the speed of reinforcement concrete corrosion by causing a delay in the corrosion process.