Critical Review on Durable Concrete in Chloride-Containing Environments: Material Design, Monitoring, and Life-Cycle Management

Durable concrete has emerged as a key material strategy for enhancing the performance and extending the service life of infrastructure in chloride-containing environments, owing to its resistance to chloride ingress and corrosion-induced deterioration. This paper presents a systematic review of recent advances in durable concrete, establishing a comprehensive technical framework encompassing material design, transport mechanisms, and lifecycle durability management. Research demonstrates that supplementary cementitious materials, corrosion inhibitors, and non-metallic reinforcements significantly mitigate chloride penetration and corrosion while improving durability performance in various structures, including marine, coastal, and transportation infrastructures. The effectiveness of these approaches is fundamentally attributed to pore structure refinement, electrochemical regulation, and the elimination of corrosion-prone components. However, transitioning durability technologies from “effective” to “reliable and designable” still faces critical challenges: the mechanisms of multi-factor coupling under complex environments remain unclear, transport models under non-steady conditions require further development, and inconsistencies persist among international durability design codes. Accordingly, this paper highlights that future research should focus on developing multi-scale coupled models, refining environmental classification and prediction methods, integrating intelligent sensing technologies, and establishing unified lifecycle-based design frameworks. These advancements are essential to promote durable concrete from material-level optimization toward system-level, intelligent durability design, thereby supporting the development of sustainable infrastructure.