Design-oriented uniaxial material model for predicting longitudinal compressive behaviour of D36 steel plates with multiple mechanically induced pits

Abstract

ABSTRACT An experiment was conducted on D36 steel plates under various corrosion scenarios. This was realised to determine the interactive effect of multiple corrosion pits on the compressive behaviour of stiffened plates and to establish a generalised design-oriented uniaxial material model for application in fibre element models to assess the strength and stability of ship structures. The performance parameters were observed to be highly sensitive to corrosion through the test. To obtain a better understanding of the transition between the two typical failure modes, i.e. strength failure and buckling failure, a parametric sensitivity analysis was performed on corroded specimens to identify the effects of some factors on the length coefficient. Using the test data, a design-oriented linear–exponential stress vs. strain material model was proposed, and it was observed that the corrosion-based exponent in this model could switch it smoothly from a bilinear form for lower corrosion cases to an exponential form for higher corrosion cases.