Experimental study on flexural behavior and bending capacity prediction of Q550E steel beams within corroded shear span

Abstract

An experimental study is carried out to investigate the degradation behavior of Q550E HPS steel beams with corroded shear span. At first, tensile tests of 15 pieces of steel are undertaken to obtain the degradation law of mechanical property parameters. Four steel beams with different corrosion damage levels in shear span are designed by electrochemical accelerated corrosion. The flexural loading tests of corroded steel beams are conducted, and the mechanical response of local corrosion to steel beams behavior is discussed. The necessity of lateral bracing is discussed theoretically. Considering the constitutive model affected by corrosion and the role of stiffeners, a predictive model of bending bearing capacity is proposed. The results show that the increasing corrosion damage will cause the failure position to move from mid-span to shear span, and the failure mode will shift from mid-span compressive flange buckling to bending-shear buckling, and finally appear web buckling. Corrosion damage level higher than 10% will lead to insufficient strain development. The proposed model can predict the flexural capacity and deflection well. Compared with the test results, the bearing capacity and deflection of corroded HPS beams are predicted by the nonlinear iterative method with high accuracy.