In 1987, the Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP) launched a research effort to evaluate the effectiveness of using corrosion inhibitors as a means for mitigating corrosion in reinforced concrete bridge components. That project, completed in 1993, involved a laboratory study and field validation, and concluded that corrosion inhibitors could be applied successfully with field repair and rehabilitation techniques.

Although the SHRP study established the effectiveness of using corrosion inhibitors on concrete bridge components, it was not designed to ascertain the long-term effectiveness of the technology in mitigating corrosion. This follow-on study of the SHRP effort was initiated by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) in August 1994 and ended in July 1999. The primary goal of this study was to monitor the SHRP field sites for 5 years to determine the long-term effectiveness of corrosion inhibitors. An analysis of the results concluded that neither of the corrosion inhibitors evaluated in this study, using the specified repairs and exposed to the specific environments, provided any corrosion-inhibiting benefit.

This report will be of interest to engineers involved in bridge design, bridge performance evaluation and prediction, and bridge maintenance and rehabilitation.