Abstract
AbstractThis study presents the results of a refined numerical investigation meant at understanding the time‐dependent cyclic behavior of reinforced concrete (RC) bridge columns under chlorides‐induced corrosion. The chloride ingress in the cross‐section of the bridge column is simulated, taking into account the effects of temperature, humidity, aging, and corrosion‐induced cover cracking. Once the partial differential equations governing such multiphysics problem are solved through the finite‐element method, the loss of reinforcement steel bars cross‐section is calculated based on the estimated corrosion current density. The nonlinear cyclic response of the RC bridge column under corrosion is, thus, determined by discretizing its cross‐sections into several unidirectional fibers. In particular, the nonlinear modeling of the corroded longitudinal rebars exploits a novel proposal for the estimation of the ultimate strain in tension and also accounts for buckling under compression. A parametric numerical study is finally conducted for a real case study to unfold the role of corrosion pattern and buckling mode of the longitudinal rebars on the time variation of capacity and ductility of RC bridge columns.
Highlights
The assessment of reinforced concrete (RC) bridges subjected to deterioration phenomena is of utmost importance because of the safety issues that can occur under serviceability loads and/or exceptional events
This study presents the results of a refined numerical investigation meant at understanding the time-dependent cyclic behavior of reinforced concrete (RC) bridge columns under chlorides-induced corrosion
The present work has presented a comprehensive numerical methodology to predict the effects of chlorides-induced corrosion on RC bridge columns
Summary
The assessment of reinforced concrete (RC) bridges subjected to deterioration phenomena is of utmost importance because of the safety issues that can occur under serviceability loads and/or exceptional events (e.g., earthquakes). The corrosion induced by chlorides transported by sea aerosol close to coastal zones or originated from some industrial activities and due to the use of deicing salts in mountain regions turns out to be very severe for RC members[1,2] and deserves special consideration. Within this framework, a recent statistical study[3] based on a dataset including 20,000 coastal bridges extracted from the National Bridge Inventory of the US Federal Highway Administration has demonstrated that the durability of bridges is noticeably affected by sea chlorides at coastal distances up to 2–3 km inland. This, in turn, has motivated many valuable studies in recent years
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