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Structural Assessment of Reinforced Concrete Elements Damaged by Corrosion: Experimental, Numerical and Analytical Studies

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A special issue of Materials (ISSN 1996-1944). This special issue belongs to the section "Construction and Building Materials".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 December 2022) | Viewed by 6873

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Dr. Mahdi Kioumarsi

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Department of Civil Engineering and Energy Technology, Oslo Metropolitan University, Oslo, Norway
Interests: sustainable concrete; durability; corrosion; concrete technology; reinforced concrete structures; remaining service life of concrete structures; structural engineering; finite element analysis
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Prof. Dr. Enrique Hernández Montes

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Department of Mecánica de Estructuras, Universidad de Granada, Granada, Spain
Interests: reinforced concrete structures; earthquake engineering; structural engineering; finite element analysis; structural stability

Dr. Stefania Imperatore

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Department of Engineering, Niccolò Cusano University, Via Don Carlo Gnocchi 3, 00166 Rome, Italy
Interests: corrosion; durability; existing structures; reinforced concrete; structural assessment; materials mechanical properties
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Reinforced concrete (RC) structures/infrastructures are often exposed to different types of damages and deterioration due to exposure conditions during their service life. Assessment of such structural damages plays a key role in public safety with regards to both long-term damage accumulation and post extreme-event scenarios. Several collapses have occurred due to degradation and the poor durability of RC structures. Practical cases of premature deterioration in RC structures highlight that corrosion is one of the dominant degradation mechanisms in 70% of the evaluated cases. Corrosion also negatively affects society due to the huge amounts of money being spent for the repair and rehabilitation of existing reinforced concrete structures, to ensure their safety and quality. The high societal costs of corrosion directly reflect the severe lack of the fundamental understanding of corrosion-related degradation mechanisms, their rate of evolution depending on the environmental aggressiveness and their structural consequences in terms of load-bearing capacity, remaining ductility, as well as deformability under service conditions. The principal effects of corrosion, such as cracking and spalling of the concrete cover, are associated with reductions of the reinforcement cross-section. The latter, accompanied by a mechanical properties decay, is still investigated in terms of the hysteretic energy degradation during cyclic or fatigue loading as well as buckling behavior. Consequently, steel reinforcement corrosion plays a key role on the entire structural performance of reinforced concrete structures.

It is our pleasure to invite you to submit a manuscript for this Special Issue, gathering original research contributions and critical reviews that go beyond the current knowledge in the structural assessment of corroded reinforced concrete members by means of experimental, numerical, and analytical investigations. Areas of interest include, but are not limited to:

advanced modelling and simulation of corroded RC elements
monitoring and measurement of corrosion level
bond-slip relationship of corroded elements
experimental investigation of corroded ordinary and prestressed RC structures
seismic performance of corroded RC structures
robustness and resilience of corroded ordinary and prestressed RC structures
implementation of the corrosion effects in analytical and numerical models
predictive estimation of the residual service life of corroded RC structures
case study of existing structures and infrastructures damaged by corrosion

Prof. Dr. Mahdi Kioumarsi
Prof. Dr. Enrique Hernández Montes
Prof. Dr. Stefania Imperatore
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Materials is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

corrosion
reinforcement
corroded RC structures
finite element simulation
service life modelling
structural assessment
residual capacity of corroded RC structures

Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

17 pages, 22031 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Reinforcement Corrosion in RC Hollow Piers: Destructive and Non-Destructive Tests

by Gian Piero Lignola, Francesco Fabbrocino, Andrea Prota, Edoardo Cosenza and Gaetano Manfredi

Materials 2023, 16(7), 2790; https://doi.org/10.3390/ma16072790 - 31 Mar 2023

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 976

Abstract

In this work, cyclic-load tests on reduced-scale corroded reinforced-concrete hollow cross-section bridge piers have been experimentally performed and compared to the results of similar non-corroded piers. Piers were aged by using an imposed electric current and sodium chloride water solution before performing a mechanical cyclic-load test. The corrosion process has been detected with Non-Destructive Evaluation techniques by means of SonReb method (to check concrete degradation) and by measuring corrosion potential (to check steel degradation). The crack pattern was recorded by dedicated cameras, and an LVDT system was set up to monitor the cyclic-load test. Experimental results focused on degradation monitoring and mechanical performance under cyclic loads. During the cyclic-load mechanical test, the first cracks on the piers surface occurred diagonally, inclined at about 45°. This is the consequence of the failure mode change from ductile failure, as expected for slender designed piers, to brittle shear failure. The flexural failure occurred in the case of non-corroded piers. Presented tests can provide a useful contribution of experimental data to analyse the behaviour of corroded reinforced concrete hollow bridge piers, scarcely tested. In particular, the cyclic response can be a useful reference for the proposition/validation of nonlinear capacity models for the evaluation of the seismic capacity of corroded bridge piers. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Structural Assessment of Reinforced Concrete Elements Damaged by Corrosion: Experimental, Numerical and Analytical Studies)

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19 pages, 7175 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Experimental Investigation of the Effect of Steel Fibers on the Flexural Behavior of Corroded Prestressed Reinforced Concrete Beams

by Pouya Hassanvand, Freydoon Rezaie and Mahdi Kioumarsi

Materials 2023, 16(4), 1629; https://doi.org/10.3390/ma16041629 - 15 Feb 2023

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1682

Abstract

Rebar corrosion and its consequences are one of the most common damages to reinforced concrete (RC) structures. In structures with greater sensitivity, such as prestressed reinforced concrete (PRC) structures, where steel elements, including prestressed tendons, play a more significant role in supporting the structure, the importance of this issue increases. Methods for repairing and reinforcing such structures have been developed, including incorporating fibers into the concrete mixture to improve its mechanical properties, particularly its bending resistance. This paper presents the results of an experiment that studied the influence of steel fibers on the flexural behavior of PRC beams subjected to accelerated corrosion. Twelve beams with a rectangular cross-section of 150 mm × 300 mm and a length of 2000 mm were fabricated. The steel fibers used in the experiment were corrugated and hooked-end types, with volume fractions of 0.5% and 1.0% in the concrete. Nine beams were subjected to accelerated corrosion testing, with three of them being without fibers and the remaining six being reinforced with steel fibers at volume fractions of 0.5% and 1.0%. Each group of three beams was exposed to three different levels of corrosion, namely 5%, 10%, and 15%. The specimens were tested after exposure to corrosion through a four-point bending load. The accelerated corrosion was induced using an electric current on the prestressing tendons. The results indicated that different levels of corrosion reduced the final bearing capacity and other behavioral characteristics of the specimen, including the amount of energy absorption, effective hardness, and midspan displacement. Adding fibers to the concrete mixture positively affects the compensation of these reduced capacities. Moreover, the amount of this compensation was directly correlated with the volume fraction of used fibers. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Structural Assessment of Reinforced Concrete Elements Damaged by Corrosion: Experimental, Numerical and Analytical Studies)

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13 pages, 4196 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Modelling Strategies for Reinforced Concrete Elements under Corrosion Degradation

by Stefania Imperatore

Materials 2022, 15(13), 4601; https://doi.org/10.3390/ma15134601 - 30 Jun 2022

Viewed by 1030

Abstract

Aging and corrosion of reinforced concrete structures (RCS) is becoming a global problem, thus proper procedures for simulating the structural performance of corroded RCS should be assessed. Among the main corrosion effects, concrete cover cracking and reinforcement cross-section reduction may influence the materials’ constitutive laws, moreover the confinement contribution and the lateral instability of the longitudinal rebars can be modified. In the present paper, the predictive models available in the scientific literature to assess the materials’ mechanical properties of corroded RCS are recalled and employed into a novel model to derive the theoretical moment–curvature relationships for the cross-section of square and rectangular corroded reinforced concrete elements. The model accounts for cover spalling, buckling of longitudinal reinforcing bars, reduction in confinement pressures, reduction in concrete constitutive law due to the concrete cracking induced by rust formation and decay of mechanical properties for corroded reinforcements. The obtained results are compared with the classical simplified models for corroded RCS, highlighting that buckling and confinement variations cannot be disregarded into a reliable modelling strategy, especially when local ductility plays a key role in the performed investigations. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Structural Assessment of Reinforced Concrete Elements Damaged by Corrosion: Experimental, Numerical and Analytical Studies)

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15 pages, 2556 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Time-Dependent Reliability Analysis of Reinforced Concrete Beams Subjected to Uniform and Pitting Corrosion and Brittle Fracture

by Mohamed El Amine Ben Seghier, Behrooz Keshtegar and Hussam Mahmoud

Materials 2021, 14(8), 1820; https://doi.org/10.3390/ma14081820 - 07 Apr 2021

Cited by 9 | Viewed by 1745

Abstract

Reinforced concrete (RC) beams are basic elements used in the construction of various structures and infrastructural systems. When exposed to harsh environmental conditions, the integrity of RC beams could be compromised as a result of various deterioration mechanisms. One of the most common deterioration mechanisms is the formation of different types of corrosion in the steel reinforcements of the beams, which could impact the overall reliability of the beam. Existing classical reliability analysis methods have shown unstable results when used for the assessment of highly nonlinear problems, such as corroded RC beams. To that end, the main purpose of this paper is to explore the use of a structural reliability method for the multi-state assessment of corroded RC beams. To do so, an improved reliability method, namely the three-term conjugate map (TCM) based on the first order reliability method (FORM), is used. The application of the TCM method to identify the multi-state failure of RC beams is validated against various well-known structural reliability-based FORM formulations. The limit state function (LSF) for corroded RC beams is formulated in accordance with two corrosion types, namely uniform and pitting corrosion, and with consideration of brittle fracture due to the pit-to-crack transition probability. The time-dependent reliability analyses conducted in this study are also used to assess the influence of various parameters on the resulting failure probability of the corroded beams. The results show that the nominal bar diameter, corrosion initiation rate, and the external loads have an important influence on the safety of these structures. In addition, the proposed method is shown to outperform other reliability-based FORM formulations in predicting the level of reliability in RC beams. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Structural Assessment of Reinforced Concrete Elements Damaged by Corrosion: Experimental, Numerical and Analytical Studies)

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