Abstract
Almost all of the existed studies on the corrosion of rebars were based on round-section rebars. However, the square-section steel rebars were widely used in China from 1912 to 1949, and there was no specific calculation model or durability assessment method for this type of historical buildings. In this study, based on the original configuration design of this kind of structures, the experiments of the corrosion-induced cover cracking of a certain number of reinforced concrete members with square-section rebars were carried out with the electrochemical acceleration method. The average rust depths of the square-section rebars at the critical corrosion-induced cover cracking moment were obtained. Then, the calculation method of critical rust depth of steel rebars at the concrete cover cracking moment was presented with data fitting method. Finally, combining with predication of carbonization life of concrete, a calculation method of the service life for Chinese historical RC buildings using square-section rebars was proposed. The research results can provide the basis for the durability assessment and conservation for Chinese historical RC buildings.
Highlights
The corrosion of the steel rebar within concrete is one of the major deterioration problems for the durability of reinforced concrete structures [1]
The square-section rebars were widely used for reinforced concrete (RC) buildings in China from 1912 to 1949 [6], and the majority of the RC buildings had been listed as protective historical buildings
It is obvious that the calculation method for the critical rust depth of rebar from GB/T 51355 [9] was not adaptive for the square-section rebars
Summary
The corrosion of the steel rebar within concrete is one of the major deterioration problems for the durability of reinforced concrete structures [1]. Many studies have proposed calculation models to predict the time of crack initiation, including laboratory tests and on-site investigations [1,2,3] and theoretical models [4, 5]. All of these experiments and prediction models were for round-section rebars, and there is no prediction model for square-section rebar case. Chun et al [7] tested 66 rebars including 36 square-section rebars 30 round-section rebars from several Chinese modern RC structures built from 1912 to 1949 and presented the geometries, the physical and mechanical performance, the chemical composition and the metallographic of those rebars. A suitable service life calculation method for the RC structures which using square-section rebars was proposed
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