Stochastic modelling of concrete cover cracking considering spatio-temporal variation of corrosion

This paper presents a stochastic procedure based on the Gamma process and copulas for prediction of corrosion-induced time to concrete cover cracking, considering the temporal and spatial variability in the corrosion process. A worked example is used to show the applicability of the proposed procedure. The results show that compared to uniform corrosion a slight non-uniformity in the corrosion process causes significant reduction, up to 40%, in the expected time to cover cracking. This signifies the importance of spatio-temporal variability in the corrosion and highlights the need for more research on quantification of temporal and spatial variabilities in the corrosion process.