Oxygen permeability in cracked concrete reinforced with plain and deformed bars

Deformed bars are commonly used as reinforcing bars because of its good bonding ability compared to plain (smooth or round) bars. However, only a few studies were carried out comparing the corrosion performance of plain and deformed bars. With this background, the authors carried out detailed investigations on the corrosion of plain and deformed bars. Here, the results of oxygen permeability of multicracked concrete beams reinforced with plain and deformed bars are presented. For this, reinforced concrete beams of size 150×150×1250 mm were made with plain and deformed bars separately. In each beam, a steel bar specially made with segmented steel elements was embedded to measure the distribution of oxygen permeability along the beam after cracking. The cracking load was kept the same for the beams. W/C was 0.5. It was found that the oxygen permeability of cracked concrete reinforced with deformed bars is significantly higher than one reinforced with plain bars. The results indicate that deformed bars are more prone to corrosion than plain bars in cracked concrete.