Reinforcement corrosion of the Phoenix caissons after 75 years of marine exposure

The reinforced concrete (RC) caissons, code-named Phoenix, still visible off the coast of Arromanches, France, have been exposed to marine immersion, tidal, splash and atmospheric conditions since 1944. Little evidence of corrosion of the steel reinforcement was observed during inspections in 2011, 2015 and 2019, although there was much structural damage. Archival material from the Second World War reveals the caissons were designed to low safety margins, without consideration of durability and constructed at a very fast rate mostly with unskilled labour, minimal material usage, without additives and no restrictions on adding water to aid concrete workability. Analysis of data that has recently become available indicates the concretes had a high cement content and were made with calcareous aggregates. It is concluded that these factors contributed to the high strength, low permeability and high remaining alkalinity of the concretes and hence to the very low evidence of reinforcement corrosion. When interpreted using recent experimental observations, these observations have implications for the design of new RC structures in marine exposures and for the prediction of the remaining life of older marine-exposed RC structures.