Shear behaviour and load capacity of short reinforced concrete beams exposed to chloride environment

Abstract

The effect of corrosion of reinforcement on the behaviour of deep, reinforced concrete beams was investigated. Long-term corrosion (27 years) in an accelerated climate process using a chloride environment close to natural corrosion resulted in a high level of heterogeneous loss of cross section on both longitudinal reinforcement and transversal reinforcement (stirrups). Control beams of the same age kept in a non-aggressive environment were also tested as controls. Tension reinforcement did not have special anchorage since the rebars had straight edges. For deep beams, the behaviour during bending tests involved a combination of arch action and beam action, which could be affected by corrosion in different ways, such as anchoring capacity, stirrup corrosion and resulting transversal cracks and loss of cross section in the tension reinforcement. Nevertheless, and despite the high corrosion level of the steel bars, the ultimate capacity of deep beams was only slightly decreased. The changes in load transfer mechanism and failure mode could explain these results.