INFLUENCES OF BENDING CRACK AND WATER-CEMENT RATIO ON CHLORIDE-INDUCED CORROSION OF MAIN REINFORCING BARS AND STIRRUPS. DISCUSSION AND CLOSURE

A discussion of a paper with the aforementioned title by N. Otsuki, S. Miyazato, N.B. Diola, and H. Suzuki, published in this journal (Volume 97, Number 4, July-August 2000), is presented. In the original paper, the authors show that the influence of bending cracks on corrosion is highly significant. In this discussion, the discussers attempt to show that it is important to specify and quantify the real impact of this influence in the context of a structure's service life. It must be considered that the original authors were conducting short-term experiments, and that the conclusions obtained are not necessarily adapted to long-term corrosion processes. The relevance of using reinforcements formed from 9 steel elements to assess the influence of mechanical loading on corrosion processes is also discussed.