Use of epoxy-coated reinforcing steel for increasing the service life of FDPC deck panels

Abstract

Use of epoxy coated steel reinforcement (ECR) backs to late nineteen's century to reduce the annual maintenance costs due to steel corrosion. After developing epoxy-coated reinforcement I n the early 1970s, the construction market initiated utilizing ECR as the preferred method of corrosion protection in different structures especially highway bridges. Although use of ECR reduced the amount corrosion, still, there were a lot of corrosion issues on bridges located in marine environmental and the first evidence of defects in ECR, announced in 1986 in bridges in the Florida Keys. Since 1990, several field investigations revealed the good performance for ECR, but still examples of corrosion of coated reinforcement were reported ,