Two of the most widely used corrosion protection systems for steel in reinforced concrete are epoxy-coated steel and calcium nitrite. In severe exposures to deicing or marine environments engineers often require more than one protection system, referred to as a “Belts and Suspenders” approach. In this work the performances of calcium nitrite and epoxy-coated reinforcing bars in combination and alone are documented after several years of accelerated testing in good quality
concretes. The data show that calcium nitrite definitely improves the performance of epoxy-coated reinforcing bars, even when they are severely damaged as might occur due to poor handling or concrete placement. Undamaged epoxy-coated reinforcing bars had similar
performance to calcium nitrite and the combination system was an improvement. Keywords: concrete. corrosion, reinforcement, corrosion inhibitors. calcium nitrite, epoxy-coated steel