An experimental and numerical study on chloride transport in concrete under single bending load and coastal soft soil environment

This paper presents an experimental and numerical simulation study on the corrosion of chloride ions in concrete components, using a single pre-applied bending load to represent an additional bending moment caused by an external one-off disturbance. Besides, a novel correlation testing method, the Pearson-Mutual Information (PMI) method, is proposed based on Pearson correlation coefficients and mutual information theory. The findings indicate that a significant effect on chloride ion transport is only observed when the ratio of the applied bending load to the ultimate bending load (2) exceeds 0.3. There is a distinctly positive and nonlinear relationship between 2 and free chloride concentration (CCl), the apparent chloride diffusion coefficient (Da), as well as apparent surface chloride concentration (Cs). The bivariate time-varying model developed in this study demonstrates high fitting accuracy, with simulation results that closely correspond to actual measured data, achieving a coefficient of determination (R2) of 0.98 or higher. Furthermore, a sensitivity analysis of the model input parameters indicates that Cs is more sensitive than Da, and 2 is identified as the key parameter. The impacts of the interfacial transition zone (ITZ) and its diffusion coefficient (Ditz) were found to be minimal on the output of the model.