Critical chloride content for reinforced concrete and its relationship to concrete resistivity

The critical chloride content for initiation of reinforcement corrosion is an essential element in service life design and modelling of concrete structures. The critical content is laden with questions regarding its definition, experimental assessment and practical aspects. It should be addressed by a statistical approach. The paper discusses such issues, presents experimental evidence and considers its relationship to the electrical resistivity of concrete. A low concrete resistivity can be theoretically argued to relate to a low critical chloride content. However, only part of the experimental data supports this. The resolution of available data does not allow distinction with regard to the critical content between cement types.