Chloride Thresholds and Limits for New Construction

The literature clearly shows that chloride concentration at the steel level must exceed a critical chloride threshold to initiate active corrosion of reinforcement embedded in concrete. It is now well accepted that this critical chloride threshold is not a unique value, but rather a range that depends on several factors. Regardless, placing concrete with chloride concentrations above the critical chloride threshold for a particular situation would result in active corrosion of the reinforcement and is therefore undesirable. Unnecessarily restrictive limits, however, can lead to preclusion of some otherwise acceptable materials or require use of supplemental materials or alternative mixture designs that may increase costs or impact sustainability. Thus, there is a need from a practical standpoint to establish conservative, yet reasonable, limits so that the effects of corrosion can be managed without undue restrictions. ACI documents place limits on the amount of chlorides that can be incorporated into new concrete ? these limits are referred to as the allowable admixed chloride limits.

This special publication (SP), based on two technical sessions held during the Fall 2015 Concrete Convention and Exposition in Denver, CO, November 8-11, 2015, addresses challenges associated with allowable admixed chloride limits, critical chloride thresholds, testing for the critical chloride threshold, binding of chlorides in different systems, and how admixed chlorides influence service life. Based on the presentations, the open discussion that followed the presentations, and the papers in this SP, evidence indicates that allowable chloride limits should be based on cementitious materials content including both portland cement and SCMs. However, because research on the amount of chlorides required to initiate corrosion in systems containing high SCM replacement levels suggests that there may be upper limits at which the inclusion is appropriate, it was suggested that it may be appropriate to place limits on the replacement percentages of SCMs used for calculations of cement content when determining allowable admixed chloride limits.