This work presents an experimental investigation which correlates the stiffness changes of reinforced concrete beams with the amount of steel cross section loss, and concrete cover-cracking morphology due to localized corrosion of the embedded steel. Simply supported, concrete beams (100x150x1500 mm) with the central portion contaminated by chlorides placed during mixing of the concrete were used in this investigation. The remaining two were used as control samples. Corrosion was further accelerated by impressing an anodic current to the single #3 steel reinforcement bar (10 mm diameter). During corrosion acceleration, the beams were tested under flexure by a cyclic loading-unloading procedure. The changes on the stiffness (slope of the Force- Displacement diagram) and crack morphology of the concrete cover were registered during corrosion of the steel reinforcement. The results obtained show a decrease as high as 32% in the flexure stiffness values from the corroded specimens with only 14% of rebar radius loss.
Key words: Accelerated Corrosion, Cracking, Concrete Durability, Flexure Stiffness, Reinforced Concrete.