Corrosion of reinforcing steel due to chloride attack is the main cause of deterioration of reinforced-concrete (RC) structures in a chloride environment. Chloride diffusion in concrete is time-varying and affected by many factors. It is necessary for service life prediction of RC structures to make clear how chloride diffusion coefficients change with time. In addition, the test environment has an obvious effect on the concrete's diffusivity, especially on the chloride diffusion coefficient and the age factor. Therefore, it is advisable to conduct similarity analysis of chloride ingress into concrete between an artificial simulated environment and a field marine environment. Based on the existing field exposure test, an accelerated simulated test with the same concrete mixture proportions as the exposure test under a tidal environment were designed in this paper. The free chloride concentrations in concrete with different exposure times and diffusion coefficients of concrete were obtained, and the relationship between the age factor and water/cement ratio was analysed. Finally, the similarity of the time-dependent characteristic of chloride ions in concrete between the accelerated simulation and field exposure test was investigated.

A long-term exposure test of reinforced concrete (RC) beams with different flexural loads in a tidal environment has been conducted by taking the influence of time-dependent chloride diffusivity into consideration. According to the calculated apparent chloride diffusion coefficients, a chloride transport model under the coupling stresses at different depths and chloride action was established. Results indicated that the influence of flexural loads on free chloride concentrations and apparent chloride diffusion coefficients was obvious in tensile concrete zones. However, it was not a simple inhibition in compressive concrete zones. When the flexural load is less than 30% of the ultimate bearing capacity ($F_{\max }$ ), its effect on apparent chloride diffusion coefficients in concrete is slight. However, when 45%–60% $F_{\max }$ is exerted, a critical compressive stress can be detected. After exceeding the critical compressive stress, the chloride transport in concrete will be accelerated. Moreover, when the flexural load reaches 60% $F_{\max }$ , the critical compressive stress of accelerating chloride transport, which is 5.848 MPa, that is, 20% of the cubic compressive strength ($f_{\mathrm{cu}}$ ), appears.

To study the effects of basalt fibers (BFs), calcium sulfate whiskers (CSWs), and modified calcium sulfate whiskers (MCSWs) on the compressive strength and dynamic modulus of elasticity of concrete, this paper utilizes Mercury Intrusion Porosimetry (MIP) to measure the microstructure of concrete and calculate the fractal dimension of pore surface area. The results indicate that both CSWs and BFs can increase the compressive strength of concrete. CSWs can enhance the dynamic modulus of elasticity of concrete, while the effect of BFs on the dynamic modulus of elasticity is not significant. The improvement in compressive strength and dynamic modulus of elasticity provided by MCSWs is significantly greater than that provided by CSWs. Both CSWs and BFs can effectively improve the pore structure of concrete and have a significant impact on the surface fractal dimension. CSWs inhibit the formation of ink-bottle pores, while BFs increase the number of ink-bottle pores. Due to the ink-bottle pore effect, the fractal dimension of the capillary pore surface is generally greater than three, lacking fractal characteristics. The compressive strength and dynamic modulus of elasticity of concrete have a good correlation with the fractal dimensions of large pores and transition pores.

To reveal the global picture and emerging evolution trends with sufficiently large literature data of RC structure’s service life prediction, especially the time to corrosion initiation, the scientometric analysis on the corresponding evolution trends was performed by using visualization software CiteSpace and VOSviewer in this paper. First, the application of CiteSpace and VOSviewer and retrieval strategy for data collection were described. And then, information visualization analysis was carried out based on the papers related to RC structure’s service life evaluation from publications number evolution, journal distribution, and authors’ contribution. Finally, document cocitation network, cooccurring keywords network, and timeline view of keywords network were conducted to discuss the research hotspots on time to corrosion initiation evaluation of reinforcement. Research results reveal that the number of publications on RC structure’s service life evaluation reached its peak in 2011. Besides, Structural Safety is the journal that makes the most significant contributions, and Professor Li CQ is the author with the most contribution score. Moreover, the knowledge body of the time to corrosion initiation prediction consists of six clusters; the high‐citation articles in this field mainly focus on the multiple‐parameters model and probabilistic reliability method.