In the South-North Water Transportation Project of China, a kind of prestressed concrete cylinder
pipe (PCCP) with 4m in diameter is applied, and sacrificial anodes are used to prevent the prestressed
wires inside PCCP from corrosion. To evaluate the cathodic protection system, a new type of test
coupon is developed to measure both the polarized potential and the native potential of the prestressed
wires in PCCP. In this paper, details about the test coupon’s interior structure, as well as its functions and
the performances of the embedded electrode reference are discussed. Besides, some modeling
experiments are also conducted to study the coupon’s performances, and both the test data of modeling
experiments and measured data in the field show that the test coupon is capable of monitoring the
cathodic protection of PCCP.
Key words: prestressed concrete cylinder pipe, cathodic protection, test coupon, structure design,
MnO2 reference electrode