This paper addresses preliminary results of an on-going research project, which is to investigate performance of epoxy coated reinforcing steels (ECRs) exposed to a laboratory testing environment The ECRs acquired from six sources were embedded in 76 chloride contaminated test slabs (two ECRs per slab, in most cases) and comtected to bottom mat of #5 black rebars. After they were exposed to different environments, some of the slabs were autopsied at three different times (10 months to 3.5 years). According to the autopsy results in terms of degree of coating disbondment, corrosion state at the substrate and macrocell current, it was observed that ECR performance ranged from excellent to poor and key factor was the density and size of coating defects which were initially present or developed during exposure. Keywords - Adhesion, Autopsy, Cathodic Delamination, Chloride Content, Coating Disbandment, Coating Failures
Corrosion, Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy (EIS), Epoxy Coated Reinforcing Steel (ECR), and Macrocell Current.