Corrosion resistance and mechanical performance of steel reinforcement, before and after shot-blasting process

As it is widely known, corrosion of steel reinforcement is one of the main causes of deterioration of the reinforced concrete structures. Corrosion phenomena combined with seismic loads aggravate the situation. For this reason, in the present paper, an effort is made to upgrade the performance of steel reinforcement against corrosion, using the shot blasting method. Precisely, two groups of specimens were prepared, one of which had previously been shot blasted. Afterwards, the specimens were undergone artificial corrosion, in order to compare the results of the developed corrosion damage. Some of them were inserted in a salt spray chamber and the rest of them were corroded via "impressed current density corrosion" technique. Finally, mechanical tests were executed, in order to make an assessment concerning the performance of the reference and the shot blasted material, before and after corrosion effect. Both selection of the double shot blasting process and experimental results that came out, were really encouraging.