ABSTRACT
ABSTRACT In order to mitigate chloride ingress and subsequent chloride-induced reinforcement corrosion in cracked concrete, a number of protection mechanisms are available. However, if at the moment of manual crack repair, a high amount of chloride ions is already present in the concrete matrix and can diffuse to accumulate in sufficient quantity at the location of the reinforcing steel, manual healing will not be as effective. When cracks are healed autonomously, the healing mechanism is triggered immediately upon crack occurrence and thus limits almost immediately ingress and accumulation of aggressive ions near the rebar. Therefore, within this study, a comparison was made between the efficiency of manual crack healing, for which chloride ions possibly already penetrated via the crack before repair, and autonomous crack healing, resulting in immediate repair, to mitigate chloride ingress in cracked concrete.
