Infrastructure and Utilities Corrosion
Infrastructure and utilities corrosion is estimated to account for over fifty percent of the total cost of corrosion in the United States. This cost encompasses the degradation of highway bridges, gas and liquid transmission pipelines, waterways and ports, drinking water and sewer systems, hazardous materials storage, buildings, airports, and railroads. To ensure that structures and services continue to function throughout their design life, it is important to address corrosion-related problems before they become failures.
Exponent's corrosion scientists and engineers, working closely with civil, structural, and geotechnical engineers, provide an integrated approach to solving infrastructure-related issues, including prestressed and reinforced concrete corrosion, sulfate-attack of concrete, underground (soil) corrosion, atmospheric corrosion, and pipeline failures. In addition to root-cause failure analysis investigations, Exponent’s corrosion scientists and engineers routinely provide consulting services to our clients on corrosion evaluation and testing, remaining-life estimations, materials selection and compatibility audits, cathodic protection evaluations, and corrosion-monitoring and remedial-measures recommendations.
In conjunction with our electrochemical and corrosion laboratory facilities, Exponent’s infrastructure-related testing capabilities include:
- Rapid Chloride Permeability Test (RPT)
- AASHTO T259 - Resistance to Chloride Ion Penetration.
- Rebound hammer.
- Carbonation, pH, and chloride content.
- Half-cell potential mapping to identify areas of corrosion hot spots.
- Moisture content of soil and aggregate.
- Soil corrosivity classification.
- Concrete coring and testing.
- Alkali-silica reactivity (ASR) tests and its effects on concrete strength.
- Nitrite (corrosion inhibitor) content analysis in fresh and hardened concrete.
- Onsite testing and assistance during installation of cathodic protection systems.
- Post installation testing of cathodic protection systems.
- Stray current evaluation.
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