Stability of reference electrodes embedded in concrete: a statistical evaluation

Embeddable reference electrodes are essential in monitoring corrosion statu s of reinforcing steel in concrete structures when a continuous remote cont rol of potential or surveys of sites difficult to access are required. Due to unavoidable potential fluctuations the comparison between different type s of reference electrodes and their long term stability cannot be performed without a statistical approach to data analysis. An effort in this sense, with interesting results, has been made as reported in this paper Three dif ferent embeddable reference electrodes were tested in two different concret e mixtures, a low resistivity and a high resistivity concrete. In spite of a wide data scatter a statistically significant distinction in the behaviou r of different embeddable reference electrodes has been evidenced.