Application of BEM for Improving Corrosion Assessment of Public Building Stricken by Tsunami Aceh 2004

The earthquake and tsunami that struck Aceh region on December 2004 caused many public buildings submerged by seawater. In long periods, it will promote the premature failure of the existing buildings constructed by reinforced concrete structure due to corrosion. Early detection of the corrosion is urgent. The corrosion assessment using haft-cell potential mapping has been conducted to understand the current status of public buildings after five years tsunami Aceh 2004. The results for four existing public buildings in the region show that the corrosion level of steel in concrete of the buildings was already at intermediate risk. However, these results show only the corrosion risk instead of the actual corrosion of the steel. To improve the corrosion assessment, BEM was employed by simulating some factors that might affect the measured potential on the concrete surface. Laplace equation is used to model the potential in concrete structure. The steel surfaces were represented by using polarization curves. BEM is employed to solve the Laplace equation; hence the potential and current density in the whole domain can be obtained. The simulation results show that the potential corrosion on concrete surface was significantly affected by corrosion of steel, concrete conductivity and concrete cover. Accordingly, by employing BEM, more precise corrosion of steel in concrete can be identified from the measured potential on the concrete surface. Moreover, further study is needed to apply the proposed method in the field.