Simulation of a novel capacitive sensor for rebar corrosion detection

•A novel non-contact capacitive transducer (CT) sensor, for determining rust layer thickness, is developed.•FEM is adopted to simulate the electric field distribution and calculate the capacitance outputs in the corrosion tests.•The developed capacitive sensor proved to have strong potential in corrosion detection.•Simulations have shown that the developed sensor is effective in accurately measuring rust layer thickness.