Reinforced Concrete Durability and its Relation with the Environment - Project Duracon - in the Chihuahua City, Mexico

This work forms part of the project DURACON, which, search to characterize the durability of concrete exposed in environmental conditions in Latin America, basing on the exposition of armed test probes.  Being the material that is presented in this work, the results obtained to the exposition during 60 months in the Chihuahua City, Mexico.  Two types of concrete were designed (water/cement ratio 0.65 and 0.45) and, three covering thicknesses (1.5, 2.0 and 3.0 cm).  The trials were centered principally in the measure of the corrosion kinetics of the armors, by means the corrosion potentials and Lineal Polarization Resistance (LPR).  The Chihuahua City is considered an urban-industry zone with a temperature of 20 °C and HR of 37% annual average.  The results obtained show a tendency to the pasivation of the reinforcement rods given that the values of the corrosion potentials oscillate around the 100 mV vs Cu/CuSO₄ electrodes and the value of the corrosion kinetics around 0.07 mA/cm², itself not observed any influence of the covering thickness in the values of the corrosion potential and kinetic. A smaller corrosion kinetic in the 0,45 water/cement ratio be observed, but without coming to be considerable.